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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

IN THE 

MODERN WORLD 



The Sixth Series of John Calvin McNair Lectures 

at the University of North Carolina 

in 1913 

expanded and revised 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DALLAS 
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd, 

TORONTO 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 



IN THE 



MODERN WORLD 



BY 



FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY 

PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS 
(EMERITUS) IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1914 

All rights reserved 



4*$> 



Copyright, 1914, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1914. 



% />V~ 



J. 8. Cushing Co. — ■ Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



OCT 29 ISI4 

^CU387263 



TO G. W. P. 1 

IN VIGILS PROSTRATE AND WITH FASTINGS FAINT, 
HER VISIONS OF THE CHRIST SUSTAINED THE SAINT, 
AND NO RUDE NOISE OF WORLDLY WANT OR CARE 
DISTURBED THE STILLNESS OF THE CONVENT'S PRAYER. 
"WHERE, LORD," ONE ASKED, "MAY THEY WHO LOVE 

THEE MOST 
BEHOLD THY COUNTENANCE ERE THEY DEPART ? " 
" SEEK ME," THE SAVIOUR ANSWERED, " IN THE HOST 
OR ON THE ALTAR OF SAINT GERTRUDE'S HEART." 

NO MYSTIC VOICES FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE 
NOW SATISFY THE SOULS WHICH CHRIST CONFESS ; 
THEIR HEAVENLY VISION IS IN WORKS OF LOVE, 
A NEW AGE SUMMONS TO NEW SAINTLINESS. 
BEFORE TH' UNCLOISTERED SHRINE OF HUMAN NEEDS 
AND ALL UNCONSCIOUS OF THE WORTH OR PRICE, 
THEY LAY THEIR FRAGRANT GIFTS OF GRACIOUS DEEDS 
UPON THE ALTAR OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 

1 Saint Gertrude of Eisleben (1256-1302) passed her entire 
life from five years of age in a convent, where she was permitted 
to see many visions of the Saviour. When another suppliant 
asked where Christ might be found, the Saviour answered: 
" Either on the altar or in the heart of Gertrude." (Man moge 
ihn entweder im Tabernakel oder im Herzen Gertrud's suchen.) 
The " Revelations " of Saint Gertrude (Insinuationum divince 
fietatis exercitia) were published in many editions during the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Practicability of the Christian Life . . i 

CHAPTER II 
The Christian Life and the Modern Family . 37 

CHAPTER III 

The Christian Life and the Modern Business 

World 76 

CHAPTER IV 
The Christian Life and the Making of Money . 106 

CHAPTER V 
The Christian Life and the Uses of Money . 135 

CHAPTER VI 
The Christian Life and the Modern State . 161 

CHAPTER VII 
The Christian Life and the Christian Church . 195 

INDEX 229 



J 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

MODERN WORLD 

i 

THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

In one of the most vigorous as well as the short- 
est Letters of the New Testament, the Apostle, 
writing to Titus, his "own son after the common 
faith/' reenforces his general doctrine of Christian 
ethics by a special application to the circumstances 
in which Titus finds himself at Crete. The Chris- 
tian life, the Apostle says, is practicable even there. 
The Cretans, among whom Titus had been left 
"to set in order the things that are wanting/' 
were, it was true, "liars, beasts, and gluttons. 5 ' 
"This witness/' the writer agrees, "is true"; but 
this truth is precisely what gives an opportunity 
for Titus to teach the Cretans a "healthy" doc- 
trine of chastity, discretion, and gravity. "The 
grace of God that bringeth salvation hath ap- 
peared to all men." Crete was a good place 
for a Christian to "adorn the doctrine of God." 
" For this cause left I thee in Crete." The problem 
of the Christian life was not to run away from a bad 
place, but to serve it and save it. The purpose of 



2 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

God was to train one to live " soberly, righteously, 
and godly/' not in a world of his own choosing, but 
"in this present world.'' * Soberly as concerns one's 
self, righteously as concerns one's neighbor, piously 
as concerns one's God, — these three principles 
made, according to the Apostle, a practicable rule 
of conduct for a young man of the first century in 
a vicious and pleasure-loving world. 2 

But could a Christian teacher speak so confi- 
dently now ? Is the Christian life practicable in 
this present world ? Is it possible to live in the 
world as it now is, accepting its methods, partici- 
pating in its business, involved in its social, eco- 
nomic, and political machinery, and at the same 
time to lead a sober, righteous, and godly life, fit 
to adorn the doctrine of God ? Under what con- 
ditions can the ideals of the Christian religion sur- 
vive? Amid the licentiousness and commercial- 
ism of modern society can a domestic life be so 
maintained that it may be with reasonable accuracy 
described as a Christian family ? Amid the brutal 
competitions of modern industry can trade be 
administered and profit be made in ways which 
are consistent with Christian discipleship ? Amid 

1 Titus I, 4; II, 12; " ircudtvovo-a ijfxds " (Zuchtigt uns; 
Luther). " Die Gnade Gottes hat einen padagogischen Zweck," 
Heydenbach, in Meyer, "Kommentar uber das N.T."; 1866, 
ute Abth. s. 339. 

2 Bernard, Serm. XI : " Sobrie erga nos, juste erga proximum, 
pie erga Deum " ; cited in the detailed note of Alford, " The Greek 
Testament," etc., 1865. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 3 

the plottings of national politics and the colli- 
sions of international interests can we fairly speak 
of a Christian civilization ? And — to ask an 
even more searching question — does the Chris- 
tian Church itself, in its present condition of con- 
ventional conformity and ecclesiastical limitation, 
provide a congenial environment for the practice of 
that simplicity which is " toward Christ " ? On 
what terms is it possible to live a Christian life in 
a modern world? Must not one take his choice 
between the two? Is the Christian religion a 
practicable faith among the inevitable conditions 
of modern efficiency and happiness; or is it the 
survival of an idealism which, however beautiful 
it may once have been, has become impracticable 
to-day ? 

These questions have created in many thoughtful 
minds a profound sense of perplexity, and even of 
alarm. The world which confronts a modern man 
is very different from the provincial and primitive 
environment of the New Testament teaching; 
but even though this new world is less likely than 
that of Crete to produce "liars, beasts, and glut- 
tons," it seems quite as hard to adjust to the 
maxims of the Christian Gospel. A modern man, 
for example, finds himself compelled by circum- 
stances to devote two-thirds of his waking hours 
to the making of his living and the securing of a 
margin of income, but when he turns, in some 
hastily snatched interval, to the New Testament, 



4 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

he reads the unqualified command of Jesus Christ, 
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." 
Another man is trained in habits of economy and 
thrift, and is met by the peremptory counsel: 
"Sell that thou hast and give to the poor." A 
student of modern methods in charity is taught to 
distrust as a social menace the practice of indis- 
criminate relief, and then finds his science con- 
fronted by the saying, "Give to him that asketh 
thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn 
not thou away." An unjustified attack is made on 
one's self or one's country, and resistance to it has 
to meet the words, which to Tolstoi made the cen- 
tral teaching of the Gospel, "Whosoever shall 
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other 
also." Must one not choose between the idealism 
of the Gospels and the utilitarianism of modern 
life ? Must he not frankly confess that the Chris- 
tian law of conduct and the demands of commer- 
cial or political stability "in this present world" 
are irreconcilably opposed to each other, and that 
under the circumstances of modern civilization, 
which one can neither escape nor for the present 
transform, the Christian character has become an 
impracticable dream ? 

The issue differs from many that have been 
regarded as serious in that it is irreparable and 
absolute. Whether Church or State should be su- 
preme, whether priest or preacher should direct, 
whether liberty or conformity should prevail, — 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 5 

these controversies of the past might be deter- 
mined without a final catastrophe. But whether 
contemporary life and historical Christianity are 
incompatible with each other, whether the choice 
must be made between the ancient faith and 
the modern world, — that is a fundamental ques- 
tion. If that choice must be made, it would 
be made, by the great majority of thoughtful 
minds, without hesitation, though often with much 
distress. It might be hard to live without the 
comforts and consolations of Christianity, but it 
would be impossible to live in a world that is gone. 
One might sigh for a beautiful past, but he must 
live and work in a real, even though it be an ugly, 
present. The Christian life must be frankly sur- 
rendered if one is forced to the conclusion that its 
demands and ideals are impracticable in a modern 
world. 

This conclusion, which shakes the very pillars 
of Christian loyalty, and leaves of Christian ethics 
nothing more than a picturesque ruin, overthrown 
by the earthquakes of modern change, is practically 
reached by two groups of inquirers, who in other 
respects have nothing in common and stand at 
opposite poles of opinion and sympathy, but who 
agree in forcing this issue between Christian ideal- 
ism and contemporary facts. On the one hand 
are the critics of Christianity who condemn it as 
incompatible with modern lif e ; on the other hand 
are the apologists for Christianity who defend it as 



6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

an alternative to modern life. As to the first of 
these conclusions, one has but to recall in the lit- 
erature and philosophy of the present day the note 
of disillusion, or even condescension, which may 
be frequently heard concerning religion in general 
and the Christian religion in particular. "None 
of us are Christians," a distinguished Eng- 
lish philosopher has affirmed, "and we all know, 
no matter what we say, we ought not to be. . . . 
We have lived a long time now the professors of a 
creed which no one can consistently practise and 
which, if practised, would be as immoral as unreal." * 
"We are," an Oxford tutor has written, "official 
Christians and not real Christians. . . . Let us 
have done with pretence. Let us cease to call our- 
selves Christians when we do not follow Christ. . . . 
The last sixty years have witnessed a kind of col- 
lapse of Christianity." 2 "It must be plain," Profes- 
sor Rauschenbusch remarks, "to any thoughtful 
observer, that immense numbers of men are turning 
away from traditional religion. . . . Many of its 
defenders are querulously lamenting the growth 
of unbelief. They stand on a narrowing island 
amid a growing flood, saving what they can of the 
wreckage of faith." 3 

Thus, from many quarters, from friendly, in- 

1 F. H. Bradley, International Journal of Ethics, October, 1894. 
2 Garrod, "The Religion of All Good Men," 1906, pp. 154, 
159, 65. 

3 "Christianizing the Social Order," 191 2, pp. 11 7-1 20. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 7 

different, and hostile critics, comes this confession 
of an imperilled or a defeated Christianity. " Even 
the unprejudiced observer/' Eucken concludes, "is 
constrained to admit, that Christianity no longer 
holds its old position. It has been driven from its 
status of undisputed possession and forced into an 
attitude of defense." * " The men in whom the 
religious instinct is strongest," Mr. Lowes Dickin- 
son affirms, "move farther and farther from the 
Christian postulates." 2 Finally there is heard the 
bitter protest of Nietzsche against the decadent 
and anaemic ethics of Christian sentimentalism : 
" Christianity is the one great curse, the one great 
spiritual corruption." "It is our more strenuous 
and instinctive piety which forbids us to continue 
Christians." 3 

When one passes from these conclusions of 
academic minds to the utterances of social revo- 
lutionists, he finds the same sense of impractica- 
bility given an equally unmeasured expression. 
A generation ago Marx wrote: "For a society 
whose economic relations consist in the dealing 
with its products as commodities and values . . . 
Christianity, with its cult of the abstract man, 
especially in its bourgeois development as Protes- 
tantism, Deism, etc., is the most appropriate 
form of religion. . . . This religious reflection 

1 " Can We Still Be Christians ? " tr. 1914, p. 48. 

2 "Religion: a Criticism and a Forecast," 1905, p. 67. 

3 " Sammtliche Werke," 1895, VIII, 270; XIII, 317. 



8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

of the real world will only then finally vanish 
when the conditions of practical work-a-day life 
establish rational relations with man and with 
nature," * and Bebel, with still firmer assurance, 
taught: " Religion will not be abolished or God 
dethroned. . . . Without attack of force or sup- 
pression of opinion of any kind, religion will of itself 
vanish. It is the transcendental reflection of the 
existing social order." 2 To the same purport, in 
answer to an inquiry lately made concerning the 
prospects of the Christian religion, a leader of the 
Social Democracy of Holland has frankly replied : 
"The process of evolution involves the dissolution 
of the religious sentiment," and a representative of 
the same party in Russia has added, "The progress 
of humanity is the death-sentence of religion." 3 

If, on the other hand, one turns from these 
critics of Christianity to those who conceive them- 
selves to be its defenders, the same conclusion of 
impracticability is not infrequently promoted by 
the form of apologetics employed. To precipitate 
an issue between religion and modern life, to set 
religion in conflict with the principles of modern 
research, may be a heroic enterprise ; but its effect 
upon the modern mind cannot be anything but a 
pathetic sense of impracticability. When, for ex- 

1 "Das Kapital," 2te Aufl., I, 1872, s. 56, 57. 

2 "Die Frau und der Sozialismus," iote Aufl., 1891, s. 313, 314. 
3 Matthieu, "Das Christentum und die soziale Krise der 

Gegenwart," 1913, s. 89, note. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 9 

ample, an eloquent English priest maintains that 
the " scientific temperament" is " opposed to any 
such scheme as the Christian"; that over against 
the scientific view of the universe stands the 
"magical view," and that one must take his choice 
which way to go, * what impression does his 
brilliant dialectic make on the modern mind? 
One hears the argument as from afar, as a visitor 
to some cathedral hears the chanting of the monks 
behind the choir-screen. To conclude, "I cannot 
doubt that it is truer to say that Christianity runs 
counter to our civilization than that it fulfils it," 
is to surrender the cause of Christianity. A 
religion which runs counter to our civilization 
will be run over by our civilization. If civilization 
stands at the crossroads, where one way leads to 
the " scientific temperament," and another to the 
" Christian scheme," then there can be little doubt 
which way the movement of serious thought will 
go. Christianity and modern men will soon find 
themselves so far apart that they cannot even hear 
each other's voices ; and Christian apologists will 
be defending a position so remote from the interests 
of modern life that it is not even attacked. 

Or, when again, a distinguished philosopher, ap- 
proaching "the problem of Christianity," conceives 
that problem to have been hidden from the mind 
of Jesus himself, and disclosed only to the later 
Church, so that "the mind of Jesus did not make 

1 Figgis, "Civilization at the Crossroads," 191 2, pp. 3, 261. 

I 



IO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

explicit what proved to be precisely the most char- 
acteristic feature of Christianity ; and the core of 
faith ... is not in the person or sayings of the 
founder"; 1 no amount of metaphysical subtlety 
or literary charm can obscure the fact that this is 
an impracticable Christianity. It turns the New 
Testament upside down. The Church, not its 
Teacher, becomes the object of loyalty. A conse- 
quence is mistaken for a cause. Japanese Shintoism, 
with its reverence of ancestors and of the Imperial 
Throne, is a more conspicuous expression than 
Christianity of religion as loyalty to a Beloved 
Community. Christianity, if it is to have any 
practicability, cannot forfeit the relationship of 
the individual soul with its personal Master or sub- 
stitute devotion to the Church for discipleship of 
Jesus Christ. 

Something of the same impression of imprac- 
ticability is made on many unsophisticated minds 
by that interpretation of the New Testament, now 
much in fashion, which finds its essential character 
in what are called the eschatological or apocalyptic 
teachings of the Gospels. It has been of late 
pointed out, with a fulness never before attempted, 
that much of the language of the Gospels, and much 
of the literature which lies behind the Gospels, is 
colored by the anticipation of an approaching 
catastrophe, which was to make an end of the 
existing social order and to usher in the Messiah's 
1 Royce, "The Problem of Christianity/ ' 1913, 1, pp. 415, 416. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE II 

reign. This great expectation made, it is urged, 
the central motive of the teaching of Jesus, and 
preparation for this millennial revolution was to 
the first disciples a supreme concern. 

Many passages of the Gospels go far to confirm 
this eschatological view. A millennial hope unques- 
tionably burned in the hearts of the Hebrew people, 
and the ministry of Jesus no doubt fanned this 
hope into a flame. "The Son of man shall come 
in his glory" ; "The time is at hand" ; "There be 
some standing here which shall not taste of death 
till they see the Son of man coming in his king- 
dom" ; "Watch ye therefore " ; — these, and many 
similar prophecies of a world-judgment, repeat the 
warnings of an impending catastrophe which 
abound in the Apocalyptic writings. If, therefore, 
as is confidently argued, the cardinal principle of 
New Testament interpretation is to be found in 
this feverish anticipation of the end of the existing 
world, then the ethics of Christianity must be 
shaped by this expectation and must be appropriate, 
not to social conditions which are fixed or perma- 
nent, but to a fleeting and perishing world. It 
must be an interim ethics, acceptable to those only 
whose minds are dominated by the millennial 
dream. Christian ethics was a product of this early 
expectation and must share its fate. Interim con- 
duct, adapted to a world that is to pass away, 
cannot be appropriate to a world that is perma- 
nent. "Can any moralist," asks an English critic, 



12 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

" firmly persuaded of the imminent dissolution of 
the world and all things in it, frame an ethical code 
adequate for all time? . . . These precepts, 
literally pursued, mean in any age the dissolution 
of what is called society. . . . Jesus did not wish 
to give men something to live by, but something 
wherewith to face the day of the Son of man." x 
When, therefore, the dreams of the early Christians 
proved to be illusory, and the later followers of 
Jesus were forced to adjust themselves to an un- 
regenerated world, it became necessary either to 
abandon the ethical teaching of the Gospels or to 
transform it into principles which could be rationally 
obeyed. Christian conduct could not be perma- 
nently inspired by a manifest, even though a 
magnificent, mistake. 

This conclusion, though it be defended as con- 
tributory to orthodoxy, leaves, in fact, little of 
Christianity as the religion of Jesus Christ. The 
foundation of faith becomes, not the simple teaching 
of the Synoptic Gospels, but the mystical visions re- 
ported after the Master's death. "The final ten- 
dency of advanced theology," an English theologian 
does not hesitate to affirm, 2 "is backward . . . and 
its great act of violence is the driving of a wedge 
between the Synoptics and the Epistles, between 
the message of Jesus and the Gospel of his apostles." 

1 Garrod, op. cit., pp. 60, 65, 71. 

2 Forsyth, "The Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 1909, pp. 
133, 168, 169. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 1 3 

The Synoptics exhibit, under this interpretation, 
"an incomplete situation, a raw audience, and an 
inchoate context of evidence." "It is in the 
Epistles that we have the essence of Chris tianity." 
" The apostolic inspiration . . . takes as much pre- 
cedence of his earthly and (partly) interim teaching 
as the finished work is more luminous than the work 
in progress." As another English writer has said: 
" Christ must be looked at in two ways ; as the his- 
torical Jesus, who lived in Palestine, . . . and as 
the Eternal Christ. . . . When a man discards the 
claims of the historical Jesus he is guilty of the 
' minor rejection' ; but when he pushes away from 
him all desire or acceptance of the Ideal Christ 
that involves what I may call the ' major excom- 
munication.'" * 

The first impression made by this new defence 
of the faith is one of sheer bewilderment. Paul, 
not Jesus, becomes the founder of the Christian 
religion. The Epistles, not the Gospels, are its 
most precious documents. Jesus was not under- 
stood until he was gone. Indeed, he did not under- 
stand himself. Orthodoxy may thus become saved 
at the expense of historicity. The Sermon on the 
Mount and the Parables are subordinated to the 
mysticism of Christian tradition. " Non tali auxilio 
nee dejensoribusististempus eget" Christian faithis 
not likely to find itself strengthened by this under- 
mining of its foundations. The creeds are but ill-de- 

1 Lloyd, "Studies of Buddhism in Japan/' 1908, p. 29. 



14 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

fended when they are set in contrast with the Gospels. 
" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, 
which is Jesus Christ." Such subversive criticism 
tempts one to the cynicism of the evil spirit in his 
answer to the sons of Sceva: " Jesus I know, and 
Paul I know ; but who are ye ?" x 

Even more obvious, however, is the fact that 
Christian ethics on these terms becomes for plain 
people, whose faith rests on the Gospel records 
of the teaching of Jesus, impracticable. Their 
simple discipleship of practical obedience is sup- 
planted by a rapt communion of the spirit which 
is possible to the elect alone. Phrases like 
"The imitation of Christ" and " Follow me," lose 
their meaning in this rarefied theological atmos- 
phere. "In the Christianity that is to be," it is 
taught, "we shall hear still, I hope, of the imitation, 
but more also of the limitation of Christ." 2 Escha- 
tology thus in large degree eliminates ethics. 
"The price demanded," we must conclude with 
Dean Inge, "is ruinous. ... To cut off the tree 
of Christianity from its roots, to accept the cynical 
conclusion that a great world-religion arose out of 
the crazy visions of a mistaken enthusiast, — all 
this is to bring desolation, not peace, to the mind 
of the troubled believer." 3 

Serious, however, as may be the effects of these 

1 Acts, XIX, 15. 

2 Garrod, op. cit., p. 60. 

3 Constructive Quarterly, June, 1913, pp. 319, 304. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 1 5 

tendencies in criticism and apologetics, it is not 
through them that the sense of impracticability 
for the Christian life is chiefly conveyed. Much 
more convincing to the great mass of plain people 
than these discussions of the critics is the evidence 
of their own observation of contemporary con- 
duct. What is the practical effect of Christian 
motives, they ask themselves, on those who pro- 
fess Christianity? Do their lives testify to the 
practicability of their faith? Is the Christian 
religion actually moulding the habits of Chris- 
tian believers; or are the ideals of Christianity 
revered much more than they are realized ? Here 
is the point where the authority of the Chris- 
tian life seems most difficult to maintain. Its 
position is undermined by the un-Christian con- 
duct of Christians. Its defence is more imperilled 
by treachery than by attack. The reaction from 
Christianity is not so much intellectual as it is 
moral. The most threatening enemy of religion is 
not infidelity but inconsistency. "To a large ex- 
tent," said John Bright in 1880, "the working 
people of this country do not care any more for 
the doctrines of Christianity than the upper classes 
care for the practice of that religion." 1 Might not 
a similar indictment be made to-day? What 
shall one say of a condition of society where 
the creeds of the Church are often devoutly 
repeated without perceptible effect on the prac- 
1 Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," 1913, p. 428. 



l6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tical conduct of domestic or social affairs, where 
divorce or gambling may be no bar to social recog- 
nition, and where the entertainments of the pros- 
perous may exhibit a vulgarity not tolerated in the 
dance-halls of the slums? If the current moral 
standards of Christian believers are no better than 
those which prevail among other decent people, 
how can the Christian teaching be regarded as 
having unique significance ? If self-sacrifice, gener- 
osity, and integrity are often found quite apart 
from religious profession, may not the Christian 
character be regarded as superfluous in modern life ? 
May it not be probable that the prevailing standard 
of conventional conduct, the " social ethos," as Pro- 
fessor Sumner called it, is in fact governing habit and 
desire, even where religious faith appears to control ? 
May not many people deceive themselves with the 
belief that they are disciples of Jesus Christ, when 
in fact they are children of their own age, or tradi- 
tion, or race? If one should scrutinize his own 
conduct, might it not appear that the ideals of 
Christianity have become impracticable in the life 
which he is compelled to lead ? 

Even when one turns from these obvious delin- 
quencies to more heroic lives, a similar impression 
of impracticability may be felt. When, for example, 
an exalted nature like that of Tolstoi breaks away 
from social ties, scorning and rebuking modern 
civilization in the name of the Christian life, and at 
last, in the dark and cold of a Russian winter, 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 1 7 

abandons wife and family to secure for his last days 
Christian peace, what effect does this struggle for con- 
sistency make upon the modern mind ? Reverence, 
honor, the hush of criticism in the presence of death 
— all these have been world-wide, but this emotional 
admiration cannot disguise the hopeless impractica- 
bility of such a faith. Like the charge of Balaklava, 
it was magnificent, but it was not war. It did not 
win the battle of life : it ran away from that battle. 
The ethics of Tolstoi, instead of facing a conflict 
with the world, counselled a flight from the world. 
Europe and Asia, as Harnack has said, met in 
Tolstoi, and Asia conquered. Oriental quietism 
became the ideal of the Christian character. In- 
stead of saving others, Tolstoi fled from others to 
save himself ; and by a curious Nemesis this final 
desire for solitary peace was pitifully frustrated. 
Never was Tolstoi so much before the eyes of the 
world, or of so much trouble to his friends, as in 
his death. The lonely railway station where he 
lay became a camp where family and disciples 
guarded his last hours, and a score of reporters 
watched at the bedside of the old man whose su- 
preme wish was to die alone. If, then, says the 
modern man, this is Christian discipleship, it is 
simply not for me. If this is the sober, righteous, 
and godly life, then it cannot be lived "in this 
present world." For me, and for millions like me, 
there can be no retreat from things as they are. 
My ethics cannot be those of the runaway. Home 



1 8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and family, money-getting and money-spending, 
the temptations of commercial and social life — 
these are not to be eluded as snares for my soul. 
They are the essential conditions under which my 
soul must be saved, if saved it can be. If the 
Christian life means non-resistance, asceticism, 
monasticism, then, however beautiful and un- 
worldly such saintliness may be, it must remain 
for me nothing more than an impracticable and 
unrealizable dream. 

From the impression thus created, either by 
learning or by life, of the inapplicability of Chris- 
tian ethics to the modern world, there have fol- 
lowed two sorts of consequences. On the one 
hand is the sentimental approval of a faith which 
cannot be reduced to practice. One may revere 
the teaching without proposing to obey it. Chris- 
tian conduct may come to be regarded as a Catholic 
layman views the vita religiosa of the clerical 
orders. It is a counsel of perfection which few 
can accept, but which an unsanctified world may 
admire from afar. Thus there may ensue a view 
of the Christian life which is practically that of a 
looker-on; a conventional conformity which does 
not even propose to itself a genuine obedience. 
Certain incidents of experience — birth, marriage, 
and death — may be consecrated to God ; but the 
long years of work and play, of love and struggle, 
are ruled by motives of the world, the flesh, or the 
devil. One comes to live on a left-over piety, as 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 1 9 

he may live on an inherited estate, without much 
thought of its origin or responsibility. Christian 
believers, as Lawrence Oliphant once said, fall into 
two great groups, the wholly worldly and the 
worldly-holy. The surface of life may be smoothed 
by Christian ordinances and consolations, while 
the depths remain unperturbed. Thus one may be 
in practice a citizen of "this present world," but 
in theory, or in moments of profound sorrow and 
joy, a patron of "the sober, righteous, and godly 
life." "If all things that evil and vicious manners 
have caused to seem inconvenient . . . should be 
refused," wrote Sir Thomas More, in words which 
have a very modern ring, "then we must among 
Christian people wink at the most part of all those 
things which Christ taught us. . . . But preachers 
. . . have wrested and wried his doctrine, and 
like a rule of lead applied it to men's manners, 
that by some means . . . they might agree to- 
gether." * 

On the other hand is the more candid and open 
reaction from a code which is inconsistent with 
modern life. If, it is argued, all that can be sub- 
stituted for an incredible theology is an impossible 
ethics, then, it would seem, the Christian religion 
must be frankly discarded as an impracticable 
faith. As the cosmology of Genesis once obstructed 
the advance of science, so, it is concluded, the eth- 
ics of the Gospels have now become social obstruc- 
1 "Utopia/' tr. Robinson, 1624, First Booke, p. 38. 



20 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tions or indorsements of wrong, and those who 
commit themselves to the modern spirit must 
turn away, some with sorrow, and some with scorn. 
Like the men of the parable, they go their ways, 
one to his farm, another to his merchandise ; or, in 
a more tragic reaction, bitterness and wrath may 
possess the soul of one who recalls what was taught 
him as eternal truth, until he turns on those feeble 
arguments and slays them. 

It is folly to disguise from one's self the extent 
of this defection, not only from the theology, but 
hardly less from the ethics of Christianity. The 
ominous fact confronts the modern world that a 
very large proportion, not only of frivolous and 
superficial people, but also of serious and cul- 
tivated minds, have simply dropped the motives 
of religion from among their habitual resources, 
and are supported in their experiences by sanctions 
and consolations derived from science or art, from 
work or play. Much of this modern paganism is 
due, no doubt, to the reserve of science or to the 
preoccupation of business, but much is also due 
to the superfluous refinements of Christian theology 
and the unreal distinctions of Christian ethics. 

Whatever may be the proportion of these various 
influences, the result is beyond dispute. We hear 
much of the alienation of the working-classes from 
religion, and new ways are bravely devised to reach 
the masses and to preach the Gospel to the poor. 
But this defection of the wage-earners, serious as 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 21 

it may be, does not compare in significance with 
the intellectual neutrality or indifference of great 
numbers of the privileged and thoughtful. Fifty 
years ago Huxley, in a touching letter to Charles 
Kingsley, wrote: " Understand me that all the 
young men of science whom I know are essentially 
of my way of thinking. I know not a scoffer or 
an irreligious man among them, but all regard 
orthodoxy as you do Brahminism" ;* and at about 
the same date, Lowell, in his Essay on Lessing, 
said: "The world has advanced to where Lessing 
stood, while the Church has stood stock still, and 
it would be a curious, were it not a melancholy, 
spectacle to see the indifference with which the 
laity look on while theologians thrash their wheat- 
less straw." 2 

What, a generation ago, was but a half- 
recognized alienation is now unmistakable and 
conspicuous. Great numbers of modern minds 
are not even critical of religion ; they have simply 
turned their attention another way. One must 
begin a defence of the Christian life to-day with 
much the same words which Schleiermacher 
used a century ago: "It may appear an un- 
expected and extraordinary undertaking that any 
one should still venture to demand from those 
who are conscious of their superiority and are mas- 
ters of modern learning, any attention for a sub- 

1 "Life and Letters,"' 1900, 1, p. 219. 

2 "Prose Works," II, p. 217. 



22 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

ject which they have so completely put aside." x 
A man of science, not long ago, when asked his 
opinion about religious problems, answered, 
"We simply do not think of these things at all." 
On the whole, then, the conclusion seems not 
unreasonable which was reached in 1903 by a dis- 
cerning writer : " When the religious history of the 
nineteenth century comes to be fully understood, it 
will probably be found that at no period in all the 
long story of Christianity has the Christian faith 
been subjected to so great an intellectual strain." 2 
Here is a situation which must be frankly faced. 
No cause is safe if it lose the loyalty of the best 
trained minds; and in spite of much rallying of 
forces, and reckoning of statistics, and munificence 
of giving, it can hardly be maintained that the 
motives and aims which habitually govern the 
thought and work of the typical man of "this pres- 
ent world" are chiefly derived from the creed or 
the code of the Christian Church. If Christian 
dogma seems to ask more than reason can give, 
and Christian morals to involve more than social 
stability can endure, then the chasm between the 
Church and the world has become permanently 
impassable. The Church stands apart from the 
world, like a mediaeval castle on its inaccessible 
height, picturesque but remote, a noble but un- 
frequented ruin. 

1 "Reden tiber die Religion," 1799, 1, s. 1. 

2 D. C. Cairns, Contemporary Review, Vol. 84, p. 694. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 23 

If, then, this impression of impracticability is 
so general and so undisguised, among both critics 
and defenders of the Christian religion, must it 
not be concluded that Christian loyalty may be 
dismissed from consideration by rational and prac- 
tical minds? Must it not be confessed that the 
sober, righteous, and godly life commended to 
Titus, though practicable in Crete, is incompatible 
with the inevitable conditions of the modern world, 
and that new motives must be found for personal 
and social morals? On the contrary, the con- 
siderations which have been enumerated indicate 
with precision where the problem of Christian 
teaching for the moment lies. What is the funda- 
mental fallacy in these discouraging conceptions 
of Christian ethics? It is the confusion of the 
temporary, occasional, and incidental aspects of 
the Gospel with its universal, spiritual, and per- 
manent message. Literalism applied to the New 
Testament — however reverent it may appear 
to itself to be — is essentially unhistorical. It 
forces each incident or phrase into the foreground 
of the picture, so that it has no environment of 
time or place, no shading or perspective, and that 
is to pervert history in the name of piety. A fact 
may be distorted quite as easily by false perspective 
as by false definition. The truth of history, as of 
nature, is to be found in the proportion and re- 
lation of facts. 

When, for example, the eschatology of the Gos- 



24 THE CHRISTIAN LIEE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

pels is made the master-key of their meaning, it 
is not necessary to argue that this Messianic dream 
did not color the teaching of Jesus. He spoke 
the language of his own time and race, and he could 
clothe his spiritual purpose in no other form than 
that of the national expectation ; but to drag this 
background of the Gospels into the foreground, 
and to find in Jesus merely a Hebrew enthusiast 
announcing a Utopian dream, is to distort the 
perspective of his teaching and to rob it of unity 
and insight. Nothing, in fact, is more unlike the 
teaching of Jesus than the apprehensive, excited, 
or nervous sense of an approaching catastrophe. 
His moral maxims are not based on an interim 
ethics adapted to a transitory world. On the 
contrary, they are — as the common sense of 
two thousand years has perceived — characterized 
by adaptability, universality, and permanence. 
"We cannot," Harnack has lately said in one of 
his conclusive aphorisms, "derive the ethical ideal 
from the eschatological." * There is nothing of 
an interim ethics, nothing feverish and evanescent, 
in humility, forgiveness, purity of heart, sacrifice, 
or service; yet these, and virtues like these, are 
the pillars of Christian ethics. The habitual 
attitude of Jesus in the presence of the great prob- 
lems of experience has a serenity, assurance, and 
sympathy, far removed from the excited anticipa- 
tions of abrupt and final change ; and it becomes 
1 "Aus Wissenschaft und Leben," 191 1, II, s. 267. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 25 

quite as probable that the vein of eschatological 
allusion which runs through the Gospels betrays 
the preconceptions of the Evangelists as that it 
reveals the teacher's mind. " Jesus above the 
heads of his reporters" is, as Matthew Arnold 
said, a wise canon of New Testament criticism. 
" If Jesus, " one of the most painstaking modern 
studies of the life of Jesus concludes, " had been 
the Apocalyptic that Schweitzer contends, he 
would not have ended his life on the cross, but 
somehow in the style of those imaginative works 
which tell of the end of the world and the secrets 
of the sky. ... To fail to recognize in him 
what was the first, the inspiring, the really 
creative, is to look at things upside down." * 
The eschatological interpretation of the Gospels, 
in short, when rigidly followed, confuses color 
with form, by-product with main intension, and 
finds the ethics of Jesus impracticable because it 
sees them out of that perspective which gave them 
beauty and truth. ^ 

The same conclusion may be reached when one 
scrutinizes more closely the Christian quietism of 
Tolstoi. Much there unquestionably was in the 
teaching of Jesus which encourages a retreat from 
the complexity of civilization to simplicity, poverty, 
and solitude. The ascetic life, through all the 
Christian centuries, has found itself fortified by 

1 Weinel and Widgery, " Jesus in the Nineteenth Century 
and After," 1914, p. 104. 



26 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

many sayings of the Gospels. Unworldliness, 
serenity, and restraint are conspicuous notes of 
New Testament ethics. Jesus was an Oriental, 
and above the turbulent vicissitudes of his life 
brooded a spiritual calm like a spring sunset above 
the hills of Galilee. But to confuse Oriental 
imagery with universal principles, to single out a 
teaching of non-resistance as the core of the Gos- 
pels, to retreat from social obligations in the name 
of one who gladly shared them and was called a 
friend of wine-bibbers and publicans — all this, 
however heroic it may be, is not only an imprac- 
ticable discipleship, but a historical perversion. 
It mistakes the occasionalism of the Gospels for 
universalism. It pictures Jesus as posing before 
the glass of the future, proclaiming in every utter- 
ance a universal law, when in fact he is primarily 
concerned with the individual case immediately 
before him, and is applying universal laws to the 
interpretation and redemption of that single life. 

The same false perspective may be observed in 
many other modern interpretations of the Gos- 
pels. Jesus was a friend of the poor and a critic 
of the rich. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," 
he said, ' ' to preach the Gospel to the poor. " " How 
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
kingdom of God !" "Woe unto you that are rich ; 
blessed are ye poor." "It is easier for a camel 
to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man 
to enter into the kingdom of God." What, then, 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 2^ 

it is hotly urged, was Jesus but a prophet of social 
revolution, a class-conscious socialist; and what 
was the new religion but an anticipation of the 
modern programme of a rearrangement in economic 
production, distribution, and exchange? " Chris- 
tianity," Professor Nitti has said, "was a vast 
economic revolution more than anything else." 
"Most of the great schisms and conflicts by which 
the Catholic Church has been torn, were economic 
conflicts." 1 "The democracy of property," ac- 
cording to an American socialist, "is the larger 
revelation of Christ . . . The rejection of his 
social ideal was the crucifixion he carried in his 
heart." 2 Here again the sayings of the Gospels 
must be accepted in all their solemn and perma- 
nent significance. The deceitfulness of riches, the 
responsibility of talent, the solemn alternatives of 
the dedication of wealth or its abnegation — these 
warnings or rebukes are as convincing as ever. 
But it does not follow from these sayings that 
Jesus was a curbstone agitator, inflaming a class- 
conscious conflict. The modern revolutionist, if 
he listen at all to the teaching of the Gospels, 
hears in it nothing but the confirmation of his 
own social creed. He seizes on fragmentary ut- 
terances with no regard for their connection or 
intention. It is one more instance of literalism 
distorting the record. It mistakes the by-products 

1 "Catholic Socialism," 1895, pp. 62, 72. 

2 G. D. Herron, "The New Redemption," 1893, pp. 63, 80. 



28 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

of the teaching for its main intention. Whatever 
social changes Jesus may have foreseen, his mind 
was not primarily fixed on economic affairs. He 
was not a reformer, but a revealer. "Who 
made me," he said, "a judge or a divider over 
you?" A changed world might issue from his 
teaching, but it was to issue from a change of heart. 
He was not, first of all, a socialist, but a saviour. 
He came to convert not things, but men. "The 
preaching of Jesus," Harnack has declared with 
emphasis in the volume just cited, "and the estab- 
lishing of a new religious brotherhood, were not 
essentially a social agitation ; that is, they did 
not issue from an antecedent class-conflict or annex 
themselves thereto, and in general had no direct 
connection with the social revolutions of the ancient 
world." 

These considerations of the fallacies of literalism 
point to the conclusion that the Christian religion 
is a much larger thing than many of its critics, 
and some of its defenders, have supposed. It as- 
sumes many forms, but is exhausted by none. Its 
fragmentary utterances may become impracticable 
guides, while its total view of life, its general law 
of conduct, may have permanent practicability. 
The Gospels are perennially perplexing to the 
literalist because they say so many different things. 
If each verse must be regarded as of equal weight, 
then each should balance and confirm another. 
The fact is, however, that at many points the 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 29 

teaching is self-contradictory. At one moment 
Jesus counsels non-resistance, and at another 
moment commends soldierliness. At one time 
he offers peace ; at another he burns with indigna- 
tion. He blesses the poor without scorning the 
rich. He welcomes solitude, but serves society. 
He proclaims the kingdom of God as coming in 
outward clouds of glory, yet finds that kingdom 
within the human heart. To one disciple he says, 
"Come unto me, and I will give you rest"; to 
another he says, "If any man will come after me, 
let him take up his cross and follow." In one 
saying he commends social equality — "I will 
give unto this last even as unto thee" ; in another 
saying he announces the law of cumulative in- 
equality — "Unto every one that hath shall be 
given, and he shall have abundance ; but from him 
that hath not shall be taken away even that which 
he hath." 

What do these apparent inconsistencies indicate ? 
Do they condemn the teaching as illogical and 
wavering, swayed by circumstances rather than 
steadied by principles? Must one select a single 
saying, erect it as a monumental teaching, and 
discard as an interpolation or gloss whatever does 
not harmonize with this central law? On the 
contrary, it is precisely at this point that the 
teaching discloses a character and scope which 
makes it a practicable guide for modern men. A 
witty American once said : " It is easy enough to die 



30 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

for an idea, if you have only one idea." The great- 
ness of Jesus is in his having so many ideas, for 
any one of which men have been willing to die. 
His teaching is marked by sanity and poise among 
solicitations to excess; by many-sidedness, by 
sympathetic wisdom. The variations in the teach- 
ing are precisely what give the key to its interpre- 
tation. They forbid the attempt to fix one say- 
ing in the centre of the Gospel and all else in its 
circumference. They correct the reverent but 
misleading desire to study each occasional saying 
as a universal truth. They compel one to pene- 
trate through the occasionalism of the teaching 
to the principles which these incidental utterances 
disclose, and to apply to new and unprecedented 
conditions a teaching which necessarily used the 
language and met the needs of its own time; in 
short, to pass from the letter of the Gospels to the 
spirit of the Gospels, and to confess, with Paul, 
that the letter killeth while the spirit giveth life. 
"True Christianity," a great English teacher has 
said, 1 "is not something which was published in 
Palestine and which has been handed down by a 
dead tradition ever since ; it is a living and grow- 
ing spirit, that learns the lessons of history, and 
is ever manifesting new powers and leading on to 
new truths." 

On this conclusion depends the practicability 
of the Christian life. If the teaching of Jesus were 

1 Edward Caird, "Lay Sermons and Addresses," 1907, p. 67. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 3 1 

a fixed deposit of revelation from which successive 
ages must draw their moral code, then the supply 
might become exhausted as the demand increased. 
A teaching fit for Galilee may well become inap- 
plicable to modern Europe. "Give to him that 
asketh thee/' may be good ethics in the sim- 
plicity of Nazareth and bad economics in the 
complexity of London. If the Christian life 
must be one of literal conformity to the conditions 
under which the Gospel teaching was originally 
given, then it is unquestionably true that we are 
"none of us Christians, and we know we ought 
not to be." It is, however, misdirected reverence 
which thus reduces the Christian religion to an 
unalterable fixity. The purpose of Jesus Christ 
was to free religion from this asphyxiation by the 
temporary, the technical, the external, and to 
give it room to breathe and to grow. What has 
been depreciatingly called a "reduced Christianity," 
is in fact a liberated Christianity. The practica- 
bility of the Christian life depends upon its flexibil- 
ity, its applicability, its capacity for expansion, the 
possibility of translating — as Martineau said — 
one Gospel into many dialects, the contagion of its 
influence, the transmission of its example. " We 
not only can, but must be Christians," concludes 
Eucken, " — only, however, on the one condition 
that Christianity be recognized as a progressive 
historic movement, still in the making." * 

1 Op. cit., p. 218. 



i 

32 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

As one reads the Gospels there meet him two 
great words which announce the nature of the 
teaching, as recurring motifs reiterate a central 
theme. The first is the word Power ; the second 
is the word Life. The first is the characteristic 
word of the Synoptic Gospels: "The multitudes 
glorified God which had given such power unto 
men"; "His word was with power"; "Until ye 
be endued with power from on high"; "Till 
they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
power." The second is the word of the Fourth 
Gospel: "I am the bread of life"; "In him 
was life, and the life was the light of men"; 
"He that believeth not the Son, shall not see 
life"; "Ye will not come to me that ye might 
have life"; "The words that I speak unto you, 
they are spirit and they are life"; "I am come 
that they might have life." Power and Life are, 
however, words, not of opinion or definition, but 
of expansion, vitality, momentum, growth. They 
are symbols of a dynamic faith. Power is gener- 
ated to be applied. Life is given to be transmitted. 
To restrict power is to waste it ; to save life is to 
lose it. The Christian life is not a thing to 
keep, but a thing to give; not an ancient tradi- 
tion, but a new creation; not a stopping-place, 
but a way. "I am the way," said Jesus. The 
first title given to the new religion by its followers 
was "The Way." It was, according to the Apostle 
Paul, "the power of God unto salvation"; "the 



THE' PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 33 

power of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Salvation," a 
trusted English scholar has said, 1 "is nothing else 
than the preservation, restoration, and exaltation of 
life." "The beginning of Christianity," it has 
been lately urged in a most searching book, "seems 
to represent the first definite emergence of a new 
kind of life." 2 

The Christian character is thus a manifes- 
tation of power, a way of life. The kingdom of 
God is like leaven, like a great tree; but leaven 
is a pervasive influence, a tree is an unfolding 
growth. Christian ethics is a science of spiritual 
dynamics. It deals with a world in motion. Its 
purpose is to communicate Power; its aim is to 
increase Life. " There is just one religion in the 
world," it has been lately and finely said by an 
Anglican teacher, " which has seen in motion the 
law of human life. . . . No religion that has adopted 
arrest as its note can do anything for man in move- 
ment. . . . Only a religion which can hallow and 
justify motion can be of any use to him." 3 Here 
one meets the note of emancipation and exhila- 
ration which is heard throughout the letters of Paul 
as he feels himself stirred by this new vitality and 
force. He has escaped from the bonds of the Law 
to the liberty of the Gospel. He is a minister, 
not of the letter, but of the spirit. The letter had 

1 Hort, "Hulsean Lectures," 1893, p. 101. 

2 E. Underhill, " The Mystic Way," 1913, p. 43 ff. 

3 H. S. Holland, Constr. Rev., June, 1914, pp. 248, 250. 

D 



34 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

killed; the spirit gives life. His earlier faith 
had set a veil between God and himself, but the 
veil is taken away in Christ. Where the spirit 
of the Lord is, there is liberty. With unveiled 
face he sees the glory of the Lord. His strength 
is made perfect in weakness. The power of Christ 
rests upon him. His life is hid with Christ in 
God. 

When the Council of Trent explicitly anath- 
ematized the opinion that " Christ was given to 
mankind as a Redeemer, and not also as a legis- 
lator," it made this fundamental issue clear. The 
Christian religion as a form of legislation stands 
forever over against the Christian religion as a 
way of redemption. On the one hand is the im- 
perial conception of the Church of Christ, on the 
other the spiritual conception. A form of gov- 
ernment, a legislating hierarchy, has in its very 
nature the qualities of inflexibility and fixity. A 
Life, a Power, a redemptive force, has in its 
very nature perennial possibilities of expansion 
and adaptation. "Truth," said Milton, "is com- 
par'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain. If 
her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, 
they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and 
tradition." * 

We are brought through these considerations to 
a most obvious, yet a most challenging and 
humbling conclusion. "Not even now," said 
1 " Areopagitica," ed. Hales, 1909, p. 38. 



THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 35 

John Stuart Mill, " would it be easy, even for 
an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the 
rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete 
than to endeavour so to live that Christ would ap- 
prove our life." 1 Do not these reverent words 
disclose the nature of Christian ethics and the 
permanent practicability of the Christian life? 
It is a " translation from the abstract into the con- 
crete" ; the acceptance, not of a teaching, but 
of a teacher ; not of a word recorded in documents, 
but of a word made flesh. The characteristic 
mark of the Christian life is this personal relation- 
ship. It is the intimacy of companionship, the 
loyalty of discipleship. Behind all the teachings 
of Jesus Christ concerning problems of God and 
man, of eschatology or ethics, lies his supreme 
concern for the individual life to which he may 
give power; and behind all questions which the 
study of the Gospels may raise concerning the 
universe or the social order lies the response of 
the individual will to the summons of a Master, 
who translates the rule of virtue from the abstract 
into the concrete. This relation of character to 
character emancipates the modern Christian from 
all that is contemporary or incidental in the teach- 
ing of Jesus. One does not expect a teacher of 
another age to speak the language or answer all 
the problems of the modern world. His message 
must be given to his own time and colored by the 
1 "Three Essays on Religion," 1874, p. 255. 



36 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

habits of thought which then prevailed. But the 
teacher behind the teaching, the influences which 
he described as those of Power and Life, remain 
independent of historical conditions and are ap- 
plicable to all ages. Personality, character, spiritu- 
ality, idealism, vision, communion with God, have 
in them a quality of timelessness, and are capable 
of expansion, transmission, and utilization in all 
the varied conditions of a changing world. The 
problems of life shift with the passing years, but 
the nature of life remains unchanged, and responds 
to the Life which is the light of men. On these 
terms, and on these alone, the Christian life be- 
comes practicable in the modern world. The 
machinery of civilization must be renewed and 
amplified with each generation ; but the power 
which makes that machinery move towards spirit- 
ual ends remains the same as in the ancient days 
when the multitude glorified God who had given 
such Power unto men. The machinery halts 
till the power is applied, and as that power finds 
its way, like the mysterious force of electricity, 
along all the avenues of life, and enters the homes 
and work and darkness and cold of the modern 
world, the question of the practicability of the 
Christian life is supplanted by the question of its 
utilization; and it is as though the wires which 
carry the Power sang above our heads, "I am 
come that they might have Life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." 



II 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 

The general conclusions which have been reached 
concerning the practicability of the Christian life 
open the way to the consideration of more limited 
and definite problems. x\s one surveys his relation 
to the modern world, he finds its various interests 
surrounding him like a series of concentric circles, 
of which, in the interpretation of his own experience, 
he is the centre. Nearest him, and with the 
shortest radius of social responsibility, is the group 
of the family. It is the elementary expression of 
social relationship, the innermost circle of social 
experience, into which by the very conditions of 
human birth and training he enters. Outside the 
circle of the family, but concentric with it, is the 
sphere of the industrial order, with its new forms 
of combination and competition, and its conflict 
of self-interest with the demands of the common 
good. Still larger in its sweep, and holding the 
family and the business world within itself, is 
the circle of the State, with its many unsolved 
problems of national politics and international 
peace. Still more inclusive, and, to the Christian, 
all-comprehending, is the circle of the Christian 
Church, with its schemes of universal evangeliza- 

37 



38 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tion and its dreams of the coming of the Kingdom 
of God. Out along these radii moves the Christian 
life, and as it reaches each circle in succession it is 
met by the problem of adjustment between its 
religious ideals and the inexorable conditions of 
the modern world. On what terms, and within 
what limits, can the Christian life still be per- 
petuated in the family, in business, in the State, 
and in the Church? Must family life, under the 
inevitable conditions of modern society, either 
frankly abandon or unconsciously outgrow the 
principles of Christian discipleship, and adjust 
itself to new standards of obligation or desire; 
or is it possible, even in a social atmosphere poisoned 
by selfishness and worldliness, to maintain the 
Christian life in a modern home ? Is the business 
world to-day irretrievably involved in a debasing 
commercialism, so that, as has been said, "Our 
industrial order is the disordering of nature, a 
profane traffic in human flesh and blood"; 1 or 
is there, even in an economic world so manifestly 
imperfect, a place for the Christian life in business, 
and a redemptive work for it to do ? Are national 
politics and international negotiations hopelessly 
committed to partisanship in legislation, intrigue 
in diplomacy, and the tragedy of war, or is there a 
place in modern politics for statesmen who are 
idealists, and for diplomatists whose weapons are 
candor, justice, and the desire for equitable peace ? 
1 G. D. Herron, "The New Redemption," 1893, pp. 29, 64. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 39 

And, finally, as the most humbling question of 
all, does the Christian Church, in its prevailing 
practices and conspicuous undertakings, provide 
an unobstructed channel for the stream of the 
religious life ; or does organized Christianity often 
divert that living stream from its natural course, and 
sweep it into eddies of turbulent controversy and 
shoals of arid conformity, where the Christian 
life is obstructed in its fertilizing flow ? 

These are not remote or abstract questions which 
concern theologians or philosophers alone. They 
are practical problems which multitudes of thought- 
ful people find it essential for their peace of mind 
to meet. They want to be Christians, but they 
still more seriously want to be consistent and 
sincere. Whatever other rebukes of Jesus Christ 
they may deserve, they wish to escape his "Woe 
unto you, hypocrites!" Many modern teachers 
tell them that their homes are economic ventures 
built on the sands of shifting desire ; that business 
is a form of warfare and piracy, where the unscru- 
pulous win and the honorable lose ; that politics 
is an instrument of personal ambition and organized 
greed ; and that the Church is a refuge of mediae- 
valists or a club of capitalists. What reassurance 
may they gain by a reconsideration of the teaching 
of Jesus Christ? What justification is left for 
their Christian idealism under the conditions of 
the modern world? Is the Christian life practi- 
cable now ? Must the home be paganized, or may 



40 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

it be Christianized ? Must business be brutalized, 
or may it be spiritualized? Does modern states- 
manship offer a field for Christian idealists? Is 
the Christian Church a fertile or a sterile soil for 
the Christian life ? These are the questions which 
may now be briefly considered. 

The first test which thus confronts the Christian 
life is in that inner circle which is created by the 
organization and maintenance of a family; and 
this test has become, under the conditions of modern 
civilization, by no means easy to accept. Domestic 
life has grown unprecedentedly shifting and un- 
stable. The institution of the family is threatened 
on two sides, — on the one hand by those who 
abuse it, and on the other hand by those who 
abandon it; by degradation of its purpose, and 
by emancipation from its bonds; by undertaking 
it as a commercial speculation, and by breaking 
it as a temporary contract. The number of 
divorces annually granted in the United States 
is increasing, not only at a rate unequalled in any 
other country, but also at a steadily advancing 
rate. Between 1870 and 1905 the population of 
the country doubled, while the divorce movement 
increased sixfold. In 1870 the proportion of 
divorces for each hundred thousand of the popula- 
tion was 28; in 1900 it was 73. Between 1870 
and 1900 the married population of the United 
States about doubled, but divorces increased five- 
fold. In 1870 there were thirty- three marriages 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 41 

to one divorce; in 1880 there were twenty- three ; 
and, according to the National Bureau of Statistics 
and Labor, " at the present time [1909] the chances 
are that not less than one marriage in sixteen will 
be ultimately dissolved by divorce, and it seems 
reasonable to suppose that the ratio is nearer one 
to twelve." 1 

It is still further maintained by many advocates 
of social revolution — and with increasing candor 
and confidence — that this movement toward 
instability in the family is not only inevitable, 
but desirable. The family, it is taught, has had 
its period of development and dominance, and is 
now passing to its era of decline. As a social 
institution it has been a symbol of private property, 
and with the overthrow of capitalism the relations 
of the family will acquire new flexibility and free- 
dom. The economics of social revolution will 
both promote and require a new status for woman, 
and the economic independence she will thus attain 
will, it is said, " undermine or convert marriage 
sanctions or laws." "The family of the private 
individual," Mr. H. G. Wells with entire frankness 
announces, "must vanish." "The socialist no 
more regards the institution of the family as a 
permanent thing than he regards a State or com- 
petitive industrialism as a permanent thing." 2 

1(t Special Report on Marriage and Divorce," 1909, Part I, 
p. 22. 

2 "Socialism and the Family," 1908, pp. 32, 39. 



42 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

"Marriage and the family are perennially fluctu- 
ating institutions and probably scarcely anything 
in modern life has changed and is changing so 
much." * "Woman," the leader of the German 
Social Democracy wrote, "is to be both socially 
and industrially absolutely independent. She is 
to be subjected to no semblance of ownership or 
exploitation, but to stand over against man, free 
and equal, the mistress of her fate." 2 

Facts and teachings like these reopen the ques- 
tion of the practicability of the Christian family. 
Is the ideal which the Christian tradition has per- 
petuated to be regarded as anything more than 
the survival of a beautiful but outgrown faith? 
Must one not adjust himself to a new world where 
domestic relations shall be loose and domestic 
affections transitory? Will not the economic 
changes of the future involve a new attitude tow- 
ard domestic duty and maternity? "Economic 
independence," an English scholar has said, "is 
essential to all humans. . . . The current type 
of sex-relationship which confines the wife to the 
house is inconsistent with this economic indepen- 
dence and therefore is a type destined to extinc- 
tion." 3 The consequences which this view in- 
volves concerning children are not evaded. "When 
sex-relationship results in children," the same 

1 "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 211. 

2 A. Bebel, "Die Frau und der Sozialismus," iote Aufl., 1891, 

s- 337. 

3 Karl Pearson, "The Ethic of Free Thought," 1888, p. 437- 



THE CHRISTIAN LITE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 43 

writer proceeds, "the State will have a right to 
interfere. ... On an average three births to a 
woman has been found sufficient at any epoch to 
maintain the limit of efficient population. . . . 
A birth beyond the sanctioned number would 
receive no recognition from the State." In short, 
the institution of the family would be maintained 
with the same impersonal and scientific regulations 
which govern a well-conducted stock-farm. 

How far, then, is this elimination of human 
affinity and permanent unity to go ? Is the family 
to be merged in the larger unity of the State, and 
what is called the " exclusiveness " of marital rela- 
tions subordinated to the interests of communal 
welfare? In a remarkable book, written by an 
Englishman in German, and but tardily translated 
into English, the author expresses the opinion that 
the difference between Greek and Roman influence 
upon social history and institutions may be traced 
to different estimates of the institution of the 
family. "The Romans based their State," he 
says, "and its law on the family" ; the Greek, on 
the other hand, "took as his starting-point the 
State, his ideal being always the organization of 
the 'Polis.'" While Greece, therefore, was in- 
comparably superior to Rome in creative imagina- 
tion and philosophical thought, she "shared in 
the great civilizing work of the perfection of law 
solely through the medium of the Roman." "The 
family became in Rome a firm, indissoluble unit, 



44 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and it is essentially to this that we are indebted 
for the particular form of the Roman State and 
Roman law." * In the light of such historical 
suggestions what is likely to be the future of 
civilization? Is the unity of the family which 
made Rome strong to be surrendered to the domi- 
nation of the State which left Greece weak ? Can 
the Christian ideal of the family maintain itself 
under the conditions of the modern world ? What 
is the Christian doctrine of the family? These 
questions cannot be answered by multiplying legal 
restrictions or ecclesiastical regulations. They 
are not primarily concerned with courts of divorce 
or conventions of Churches. What is at stake is 
the very existence of a social institution which 
through the ages of human evolution has been the 
unit of civilization. On what terms, one must 
ask, can the family survive, and what contribution 
to its survival is to be made by the traditions and 
ideals of the Christian life? 

When one turns with these questions to the 
teaching of Jesus Christ, he is at once impressed 
by the central position assigned in that teaching 
to the institution of the family. Jesus, through- 
out his public career, was singularly homeless. 
"The Son of man hath not where to lay his head." 
His own family seem to have been actively con- 

1 Houston Chamberlain, "Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahr- 
hunderts," ite AufL, 1898; "The Foundations of the Nineteenth 
Century," 191 2, pp. 158, 119. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 45 

cerned to deter him from his mission, and with 
the most touching solitariness of spirit he "stretched 
forth his hand toward his disciples and said, c Be- 
hold, my mother and my brethren!'" Yet the 
religion of this homeless teacher was, in its char- 
acter and symbolism, a religion of the home. 
God was a father; man was his child; and the 
communion of man with God was the intimacy 
of child with parent. The self-reproach of sin 
was nothing else than homesickness ; and the first 
utterance of a repentant life was : "I will arise and 
go to my father." The homeless Jesus entered 
with equal sympathy the homes of the humble 
and of the prosperous. He came "into Peter's 
house"; "into the ruler's house"; "into the 
Pharisee's house and sat down to meat." In the 
quiet household at Bethany he welcomed the 
symbolism of sacrifice; and to the rich Zaccheus 
he said: "This day is salvation come to this 
house." "Go home to thy friends," he tenderly 
says to the man from whom the demon had de- 
parted. "In the same house remain," he bids 
his disciples; "Go not from house to house." 
The parables of Jesus also are, for the most part, 
stories of home. The shepherd lays the lost sheep 
on his shoulder and brings it home; the woman 
sweeps her house to find the lost coin ; and the 
joy with which she calls her friends and neighbors 
together is like that "of the angels of God over one 
sinner that repenteth." 



46 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

This acceptance of the family as the type of 
God's Kingdom becomes still more impressive 
when one recalls the affection of the childless Jesus 
for little children. In these unspoiled hearts he 
found the perfect expression of discipleship. When 
the disciples asked: "Who is the greatest in the 
Kingdom of Heaven?" the teacher called a little 
child and set him in the midst of them, and said, 
"Except ye be converted and become as little chil- 
dren, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven." And, again, when they brought young 
children to him for his blessing, he said : "Whoso- 
ever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a 
little child, he shall not enter therein." He took 
the children on his knees and caressed them; or, 
as the passage has been suggestively translated: 
"He took them in his arms and blessed them 
lovingly, one by one." 1 He watched them as 
they played together, and made of their little 
games a text for his great discourse. "Where- 
unto shall I liken the men of this generation? 
They are like unto children sitting in the market- 
place and calling one to another and saying : ' We 
have piped unto you and ye have not danced; 
we have mourned to you and ye have not 
wept?'" Thus the teaching of Jesus is es- 
sentially domestic. His theology is parental; 
his sociology is fraternal. The whole of human 

*Mark X, 16; in Weymouth, "The New Testament in Mod- 
ern Speech," 1902. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 47 

experience is, in his mind, covered by the relations 
of the family. To the disciple of Jesus the world 
becomes a home, where a Father's love is the 
assurance of social stability and a child's obedience 
is the condition of spiritual peace. Here is the 
foundation of Christian ethics. Whatever larger 
opportunities and obligations may meet one in 
larger circles of social life, they are all to be in- 
terpreted in terms of the home. The Kingdom 
of God for which Christians pray is but the ex- 
pansion of the family into a world of unconstrained 
and personal love. 

When one turns, however, from this explicit 
teaching to the history of Christian conduct, he is 
confronted by an abrupt change of opinion, even 
within the Christian Church itself, concerning the 
institution of the family. The life of the home 
soon becomes relegated to a subordinate and 
merely tolerated place in Christian society. The 
higher life, the vita religiosa, is attainable by celi- 
bates only; and the family becomes regarded 
as a concession to the frailty of the flesh. 
Chastity is joined with poverty and obedience 
as a mark of Christian consecration. A man 
and woman rearing their children, however de- 
voted and affectionate they may be, are from 
this point of view engaged in a less meritorious 
enterprise than a monk or nun who has abandoned 
the responsibilities of a home to serve the cause of 
Christ. Oriental asceticism thus came to sup- 



48 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

plant family affection as the ideal of Christian 
conduct ; and the life of the home became regarded 
as a bondage of the spirit from which a Christian, 
if he would be perfect, must at any cost tear him- 
self free. 

The most immediate consequence of this 
depreciation of the family was soon reached in 
the doctrine of the virgin-birth of Jesus, reenforced 
eighteen centuries later by the further dogma of 
the virgin-birth of the Virgin herself, so that a 
miraculous spotlessness was secured for two genera- 
tions. Quite apart from the problems of New 
Testament criticism involved, — the omission 
of the story by two Evangelists, the diversity 
of account in the other two, the admission of 
Joseph's dream as convincing evidence, the 
acceptance of Isaiah's assurance to Ahaz as a 
prophecy fulfilled after seven hundred years; 1 
not to speak of the artless claim, with which the 
New Testament begins, that Jesus was the son of 
David and Abraham through " Joseph, the husband 
of Mary" ; — the story has proved peculiarly unac- 
ceptable to great numbers of devoted Christians 
because of its apparent indictment of married life as 
unsanctified and impure. A child born in wedlock, 
it seems to teach, cannot be perfectly holy. The 
relations of the flesh stain the whiteness of the 
soul. To be immaculate one must be de-human- 
ized. The logical corollary of the dogma of the 
Us. VII, 14; Matt. I, 23. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 49 

immaculate conception is reached in the monastic 
system and the rule of a celibate priesthood. Yet 
nothing can be more remote from such a teaching 
than the spirit of the Gospels. Not without the 
friction and discipline of family life, but through 
them, the Christian character, according to the 
teaching of Jesus, gets momentum and effective- 
ness. Not by retreat from the normal conditions 
of life, but by converting those conditions into 
instruments of spiritual education, the way of 
discipleship is found. Jesus takes the world as 
it is and makes it the material out of which the 
better world may be framed. He asks of his 
followers, not first of all a change of circumstances, 
but first of all a change of heart. The institution 
of the family may, if abused, be a peril to the 
flesh and a slavery of the will ; but accepted and 
utilized as Christian consecration demands, it 
becomes, both in form and spirit, the very symbol 
of the Kingdom of God. 

Dismissing, therefore, from consideration the 
ecclesiastical reaction from the ideal of the family, 
there remains the practical question of adjusting 
this normal way of life to the necessary conditions 
of the modern world. How shall a young life, 
inextricably involved as it must be in the habits 
and demands of the existing social order, approach 
the problem of marriage? What considerations, 
drawn either from science or from experience, 
should modify or fortify one's affection or desire? 



50 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

In the great summary of the Law and Prophets 
which Jesus draws from the earlier Scriptures, it 
is written that one should love God, not only with 
the heart and soul, but also with the mind. Is it, 
then, possible to apply to the instinct of love the 
rule of reason? Can rational principles be in- 
dicated for the guidance of love ? Must the family, 
because it is based on love, be left to the control 
of accident or passing whim or fleshly passion; 
or may one love, not only with the heart and soul, 
but also with the mind ? 

These questions must, of course, meet 
very varied answers under different circum- 
stances of modern life. One set of temptations 
to domestic instability is provided by con- 
ditions of poverty, and another by conditions of 
luxury. Congested living, economic want, igno- 
rance and thriftlessness threaten the homes of the 
humble; overstrained nerves, economic excess, 
social ambition and vulgar ostentation attack the 
domestic unity of the privileged. Both of these 
extremes of condition lie, however, along the mar- 
gins of American civilization. No picture of 
social life in the United States could be more dis- 
torted than to fancy it completely given over to 
domestic dissensions and the scandals of divorce. 
The great proportion of homes are, on the contrary, 
unscathed by these disasters, and unaffected, ex- 
cept with curiosity, by the pathological symptoms 
which the newspapers so industriously record. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 5 1 

Such families occupy neither slums nor palaces, 
and are comparatively free from the temptations 
both of destitution and of prodigality. They 
have been fitly called "the forgotten millions," 
the unobserved yet overwhelming majority of 
self-respecting and self-supporting lives. Even 
if one accept the shocking statistics of divorce, 
it remains true that twelve to fifteen families 
maintain stability where one suffers disruption. 
A social disease, even though it be serious and in- 
fectious, should not be permitted to create a panic 
when ninety-two homes in every hundred are 
comparatively immune. It is sufficient, therefore, 
for the present purpose to consider the case of 
the normal and healthy-minded American home. 
What are the hindrances to domestic happiness 
which such a typical family is likely to meet? 
How shall the Christianization of such homes be 
promoted and secured? What is the history of 
a normal modern family, from its formation to 
the end of its course ? 

At the threshold of such a history one is met, 
first of all, by the problem of the family as a physical 
creation, and the obligation to take account of 
the physical conditions which may promote or 
obstruct its welfare. One often hears at the be- 
ginning of the ceremony of marriage a solemn 
exhortation that the union shall not be "lightly 
or unadvisedly enterprised or taken in hand"; 
but when one recalls the thoughtless levity and 



52 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

even the criminal recklessness with which the new 
relations are often assumed, it may well seem 
as if a note of irony might sometimes be heard in 
the succeeding phrase : "but reverently, discreetly, 
soberly, and in the fear of God." Much apprehen- 
sion has of late been expressed because so many 
young persons, from motives either of self-interest 
or professional ambition, are inclined to postpone 
the thought of marriage : but a not less justifiable 
apprehension may be felt when one observes how 
many young people commit themselves to com- 
panionship in marriage with little more reflection 
than to partnership in a dance, and either ignorantly 
or carelessly defy every principle of physical dis- 
cretion. It has been demonstrated that a decreas- 
ing number of children in many families threatens 
the race-suicide of desirable stocks ; but it is not 
less obvious that a still more perilous race-degen- 
eration threatens many family stocks through dis- 
regard of well-known physical laws. There are 
many families where domestic happiness is blighted 
by the evasion of child-bearing : but there are also 
many families where children ought not to have 
been born at all. One escape from race-suicide 
may, therefore, be found in multiplying the popu- 
lation without regard to quality; but a more ef- 
fective escape would be found by selecting and 
propagating those qualities which are physically 
and morally fit to survive. In other words, young 
persons who propose to establish a Christian family 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 53 

in the modern world are called upon to consider 
with a new degree of candor and gravity some of 
the solemn facts which have created the new science 
of Eugenics, or the promotion of sound family stocks. 
To link unchastity with chastity, to blight inno- 
cent lives by inherited taints, to multiply perilous 
tendencies by an inbreeding which would be pro- 
hibited even in a stable, to beget children fore- 
ordained to be crippled or defective, — all this is 
not only short-sighted, cruel, and productive of 
the bitterest self-reproach, but it is not less dis- 
loyal to every profession of discipleship to him 
who found in healthy and happy childhood the 
type of the Kingdom of God. 

Eugenics, like all new sciences, tempts its advo- 
cates to claims which are extravagant, and to pre- 
ventive or protective measures which may be 
inexpedient, but the general conclusions now reached 
concerning the physical conditions of desirable mar- 
riage are beyond dispute. No intelligent person 
can remain unaware of the devastating consequences 
of certain diseases, and their effects in sterility, 
mental disturbance, and paralysis. The existence 
of such diseases in an active stage should be an ab- 
solute bar to marriage; and even in the latent 
period, while marriage may under certain conditions 
be permissible, the fact of infection and the possi- 
bilities involved should be known to the contracting 
parties, and the conduct of life controlled by this 
hereditary peril as distinctly as in cases where 



54 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

susceptibility to tuberculosis or to intemperance 
exists. In well-conducted life-insurance com- 
panies these diseases are regarded either as pro- 
hibiting insurance, or as greatly increasing its 
risk ; and the pretence of consecrating as Christian 
marriage what is in fact and with terrific certainty 
the beginning of physical misery and transmitted 
taint, is as grim a mockery of religious sanctions 
as the sight of Mephistopheles kneeling by the 
church porch. Nor can these rational considera- 
tions of physical welfare be safely postponed 
until the moment of decision arrives. To be 
effective at this point they must have become a 
habit of mind acquired by early training and in 
the confidential intimacy of a candid and loving 
home. The physical conditions of a happy mar- 
riage must have been learned, not from the base 
allusions of the street, but from the lips of parents, 
teaching by example even more than by precept, 
what happiness a union of healthy bodies and loving 
minds may attain. 

Approaching thus the creation of a family, the 
disciple of Jesus Christ is next confronted by the 
teaching of the Gospels concerning the perpetuity 
and indissolubility of the marriage tie. "They 
twain," said Jesus, quoting from the Book of 
Genesis, "shall be one flesh." With a reiteration 
unparalleled in the case of any other social problem, 
his doctrine of the family is set forth in all three 
of the Synoptic Gospels and leaves little doubt 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 55 

concerning his special apprehension and desire. 
It is, therefore, a most curious fact that the atten- 
tion of scholars has been for the most part devoted, 
not to that teaching in which all the Gospels 
coincide, but to the divergencies which may be 
discovered among them. The first Gospel, in its 
reference to divorce, inserts an exceptive clause : 
" Saving for the cause of fornication"; the two 
other Gospels omit even this permissive clause. 
The problem thus presented, of marriage as in- 
dissoluble or as terminable for a single cause, has 
been hotly debated by ecclesiastics and theologians. 
This problem, however, which is perhaps by 
the very nature of the evidence incapable of an 
absolute reply, has obscured the more fundamental 
purpose of the teaching. Jesus was not primarily 
dealing with the wreckage of domestic life and 
inquiring how it could be patched together, as 
though the first question in contracting marriage 
should be that of the terms of possible divorce. 
He was speaking of normal human lives, and the 
temptations and sins which most easily beset them ; 
and he observed the invasion of the family by il- 
legitimate and seductive affections, which subor- 
dinate unity to the vacillations of fleshly desire. 
It was the spiritualizing of the union quite as much 
as its legalizing which he had in mind. Unregu- 
lated and wandering impulses seemed to him a 
primary cause of the rupture of marriage. With 
a definiteness, therefore, which made its mark on 



56 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

all three of the Gospel records, he dealt, not merely 
with the question of separation, but also with that 
of remarriage. " Whosoever shall put away his 
wife and shall marry another," say all the passages. 
Alienation of affection, he knew, is chiefly pro- 
moted by the assurance that it involves no per- 
manent penalty, so that remarriage becomes easier 
than restraint. His doctrine of the family, 
therefore, — and it is certainly a severe and dis- 
ciplinary doctrine, — is one of permanence. Young 
people may not enter the union experimentally 
or temporarily, assuming that the way out is as 
easy as the way in. When the inevitable tests of 
temper or disposition arrive after marriage, they 
are not to be regarded as suggesting dissolution, 
but on the contrary as compelling considerateness 
and self-control. One does not put away his 
mother or his children because of domestic differ- 
ences, but, even when grave differences of taste 
or temperament exist, assumes the relationship 
to be permanent and adjusts himself to it as best 
he can ; and in the vast majority of instances the 
necessity for adjustment promotes permanent 
affection. It is the same with a husband and wife. 
Nomadic and shifting desires are to be sternly 
excluded when one enters into the relations of a 
family. " Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust 
after her hath committed adultery with her al- 
ready in his heart." 
The family thus becomes, not a temporary 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 57 

resort for the satisfaction of passion, or a form 
of restraint from which on the least provo- 
cation one may escape, and, as the Gospel says, 
"put away his wife and marry another/' but a 
school of character, where the capacity for ripening 
affection is trained and amplified by the sense of 
continuity and permanence. The first concern 
of the disciple of Jesus Christ in considering the 
problem of marriage is not, as some of the discussions 
of the present time seem to suggest, an estimate of 
the chances of being free. The Christian doctrine 
of marriage is not based on refinements of exegesis, 
or on the authority of an exceptive clause. These 
debates of scholars concerning stringency or evasion 
speak a foreign language to normal and unspoiled 
young people who have come to love each other 
and want to share each others' lives. They do 
not anticipate that the experience of a family 
is to be without jars ; they expect occasional fric- 
tion and temporary misunderstandings. Yet it 
does not occur to them that the escape from dis- 
agreement is to run away. They have set themselves 
to the more difficult task of forgiveness and self- 
reproach. They have not married like pairing 
animals, to satisfy their passions, but as human 
beings in whom the monogamic instinct has sup- 
planted the shifting desires of the herd. The 
command of Jesus: "What therefore God hath 
joined together, let not man put asunder," has 
in fact nothing to do with the problems of divorce 



58 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and remarriage with which it is commonly and 
solemnly associated. It deals with the much more 
fundamental problem of helping each other to 
bear a common load. The " joining together" of 
which Jesus spoke was a figure derived from the 
yoking of a pair of cattle in the harvest field ; but 
this yoking was not like the chain of a prisoner 
or the badge of a slave. It was the union of two 
lives so that each might pull the better. The 
yoke of marriage is not a punishment, but a help. 
It distributes the strain ; it evens the load, so that 
two can do with ease what both could not have 
done if each had pulled alone. 1 

Unity in marriage, therefore, does not mean 
uniformity, or identity, or subordination; but 
harmony in diversity, the convergence of 
capacities, the pulling together of lives which 
might be otherwise pulled apart. Diversity 
in disposition, while it may strike fire by 
collision of wills, often kindles thereby the 
flame of mutual appreciation. Incompatibility 
of temper, Mr. Chesterton has said, is the only 
basis of a happy marriage. The conflict of judg- 
ments, or habits, or temperaments, which is often 
regarded as perilous to the home, may be precisely 
what saves it from monotony and stagnation. 
The yoke of marriage evens up these divergent 
qualities so that they pull together, — the poetic 

1 Matt. XIX, 4 ff., 8 lw 6 debs <rwifrv&v. The use of the 
singular suggests, not a union, but a unit. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 59 

with the prosaic, romance with common sense, 
impulsiveness with caution, eagerness with re- 
straint. A union without differences may be 
saved from the storms of contention only to be 
wrecked on the sands of dulness. 

Here is one characteristic of modern instability 
in marriage which may, in some degree, encourage 
social hope. Young people have come to demand 
more of each other than marriage once involved. 
The education of women brings with it a new claim 
for intellectual as well as physical companionship. 
A new range of desire excites a new discontent, 
which may, in the end, promote, not social deca- 
dence, but social reconstruction. The new ideal 
which involves temporary maladjustment may 
issue into a firmer unity, as the first gusts from a 
new quarter are threatening, but are succeeded by 
a steadier and favoring breeze. 

Still more contributory to stability is the benefi cent 
use of imagination in fortifying the new relationship. 
People who love each other are apt to find in each 
other finer traits than others can see, and by this 
faith in each other quicken, or even create, the 
qualities in which they believe. Many a man or 
woman who appears to others hopelessly unin- 
teresting thus becomes through the idealizing 
touch of imagination, or the creative faith of a 
loving partner in marriage, the one person in all 
the world to be desired and cherished. Excellence, 
nobility, even beauty, which may be altogether 



60 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

hidden from other eyes, is discerned by love. The 
normal affection of a married pair, like the love 
of which the Apostle Paul writes, suffereth long 
and is kind, hopeth all things, endureth all things, 
and never faileth. Faith, hope, and love, he con- 
cludes, are the abiding principles of human society ; 
but the greatest of these is love. 

The family, thus affectionately and reverently 
created, has next to meet the problem of its chil- 
dren. Not to want children in marriage, and 
not to care for them when they are given, is, un- 
less the marriage itself be physically or morally 
unjustifiable, a sure sign of social degeneration. 
Love of children in normal human beings is at 
least as imperative as sexual love itself; and in 
many women the maternal desire precedes uncon- 
sciously the marital consent. It is sometimes 
felt that children are to be regarded as a domestic 
extravagance, incompatible with a decent stand- 
ard of living ; and there are certainly circumstances 
where prudence in child-bearing becomes an eco- 
nomic obligation. Yet no early mistake in marriage 
is more likely to be calamitous than the securing, 
by needless limitation of child-bearing, of present 
ease at the cost of future satisfaction. Children 
are likely to be better, both morally and physically, 
in the companionship of a large family ; and chil- 
dren of rare gifts are more likely to be of the late- 
born than of the first-born in a family. Still 
further, children may be the most profitable in- 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 6 1 

vestment of care and money which parents can 
make. The interest on the investment, though 
deferred, is cumulative. Poor people thoroughly 
understand this truth, and anticipate from large 
expenditure in the first years of married life a 
correspondingly large return to parents f in their 
old age. Prosperous people, on the other hand, 
being more tempted by present opportunities, are 
apt to be less concerned for the future, and may 
easily find themselves in later life with a full bank- 
balance and an empty home. "How can you call 
that man rich?" one of the cleverest of American 
writers has said of one of the richest of his country- 
men, "He has only one son !" Finally, it should 
be observed that childless marriages, which might 
appear to promise a higher degree of comfort and 
of harmony, are in fact less likely to be stable 
than marriages with children. According to the 
statistics of divorce in the United States two dis- 
ruptions of the family occur in cases without chil- 
dren to one where children exist. The care of 
children, which might seem to exhaust the patience 
and vitality of parents, is precisely what refreshes 
their affection. Many a home threatened by 
marital incompatibility has been saved by parental 
responsibility, and has learned by its own ex- 
perience the meaning of the ancient promise: "A 
little child shall lead them." 

The history of the normal family which we are 
tracing reaches a further stage when the care 



62 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and training of its children become the supreme 
objects of solicitude and devotion. How is religion 
to be made genuine and wholesome for children 
under the conditions in which they find themselves 
in the modern world? How may they grow up 
without a sense of compulsion from which they 
will soon be inclined to rebel? How shall the 
habits of religion resist the unprecedented assaults 
which are now directed against the modern 
home from the three strategic points occupied by 
the World, the Flesh, and the Devil ? There are, 
it must be answered, many ways of instruction 
and exhortation which parents may use, and which 
the Church, the Sunday school, and the day-school 
may supplement, to plant the seeds of faith in a 
child's mind ; but the roots of religious experience, 
if they are to be safe from drought and from storm, 
must be set deep in the associations and memories 
of a reverent and disciplined home. It is not 
enough to say that parents ought to be good ex- 
amples to their children. Too many parents 
fancy that religion is a kind of pose, which they 
may assume for their children's sakes. "When 
our children are old enough," they say, "to appre- 
ciate our example, we shall go to church; mean- 
time it is enough to send them to the Sunday 
school, and to be for ourselves free for indolence 
or sport." But the fact is that the capacity of 
children to discern between a fictitious and a real 
religion is developed much earlier than most 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 63 

parents believe, and those who are more concerned 
with the appearance of behavior than with the 
reality of faith find, as a rule, their efforts grow- 
ing intermittent and futile, and finally delegate 
the whole question of religious education to the 
minister, or schoolmaster, or other expert in this 
special field. The religious influence of the home 
on children begins, in other words, long before 
either children or parents know that it exists. 
Family life which is habitually self-indulgent, 
frivolous, or contentious cannot be redeemed by 
bedside prayers or compulsory catechisms. Family 
life where religion is indigenous and assimilated 
creates a soil where reverence and worship are 
native growths, so that the child does not know 
when the roots of religion first fastened themselves 
in his life, and only realizes their force when they 
expand into branches of idealism. Thus the family 
is not only, as the Gospels describe it, a symbol 
of the Kingdom of God, but in its normal expe- 
rience of unconstrained affection it is also the germ 
of that Kingdom. What Jesus wanted the world 
to be, that to the little child is his loving and loyal 
home; and what the parent is to the child, that 
is the work of a fatherly God in a world of trouble- 
some, yet not wholly unpromising, children. 

A good example of this unconscious influence of 
early association is to be found in the religious use 
of literature. A parent sets his child to the memo- 
rizing of passages of Scripture, or of religious poetry, 



64 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

as part of the discipline of Sunday, — or better, 
applies himself to such studies with his child, — 
and he is right in believing that this habit may 
prove to be an open door into religious experience. 
The Sermon on the Mount, the Parables, the verses 
of Whittier, or Longfellow, or Bryant, the hymns 
of Faber, or Newman, or Hosmer, or Gill, — in 
short, all lyrical utterances of the religious life, 
uncomplicated by dogma, reach the heart of child- 
hood with peculiar penetration, and are perhaps 
appreciated more completely than by the sophis- 
ticated minds of the more mature. "I thank thee, 
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent 
and hast revealed them unto babes." But there is 
more than appropriateness to childhood in the 
poetry of religion. This early intimacy with ideal- 
ism, like early intimacy with noble people, may 
enrich and color all one's later life. Even though 
the child may not perfectly understand what he 
learns — and perhaps the better because he does 
not fully understand it — the lyrical note may 
stir his imagination, the melody or swing of verse 
may touch his heart ; and years afterwards, when 
experience has taught him the truth which the poet 
expressed, the man may be supported among the 
complex conditions of life by these early admira- 
tions and half-understood sympathies. The Ger- 
man teaching of religion begins most judiciously, 
not with dogma, but with the memorizing of large 



THE CHRISTIAN LIEE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 65 

sections of Luther's Bible, and of the hymns and 
lyrics which perpetuate German piety. Out of 
the heart come the issues of life. One may often 
recognize by the very vigor and richness of his 
diction a man who has had the advantage of learn- 
ing, not merely by rote, but by heart, the best of 
Christian literature in his childhood's home. 

A further step is taken in this story of domestic 
life when the problems of education must be more 
definitely met. How shall children be trained to 
meet the conditions of modern life? How much 
can be accomplished by the home and how much 
must be delegated to the school ? Are the habits 
of social life in our great cities, and the luxury and 
frivolity of many homes, so perilous to children 
that they must be deported, while still unscathed, 
to the more healthful environment and the firmer 
discipline of boarding-schools in the country ? The 
apprehensions of many parents at this point, and 
their confession of helplessness amid the prevailing 
tendencies of business and society, have encouraged 
a new disintegration of family life, and the substitu- 
tion of schoolmasters for parents as the chief 
instruments of moral education. Some parents, 
indeed, seem reduced to a state of moral impotency 
concerning the care of their children ; and though 
competent to cope with the most intricate ques- 
tions of finance or of learning regard themselves as 
quite incapable of bringing up their own families 
with discretion and success. There are often, it 



66 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

must be admitted, great advantages in this system 
of delegated parenthood. A good school is a 
better place for a child than a bad home. A 
schoolmaster endowed with Christian idealism 
is a better influence than a father absorbed in 
money-making all day, or a mother absorbed in 
social dissipation all night. The wholesome con- 
ditions of a well-ordered school are better than the 
luxury and the preoccupation of a self-indulgent 
home. Yet it is evident that this transfer of func- 
tion is the abnegation of parenthood. It may be 
forgiven when the imperative conditions of business 
make a continuous or healthful home impossible; 
but when — as often happens — it is frankly ad- 
mitted that the habits of one's home are undesirable 
for one's children, there could hardly be a more 
guilty self -confession. In a remarkable book on 
the physical aspects of human development, a 
distinguished man of science discusses the biological 
considerations which affect the function and main- 
tenance of the family, and concludes : " It is difficult 
to picture a less intelligent and more grossly anti- 
biological idea than that which would separate 
parents and children. An equally anti-social 
means can hardly be conceived, for to separate a 
family from the people naturally best endowed 
to rear them would be to rob the community of 
the human qualities that make most strongly for 
the civilization based on individual development." 1 

1 C. A. Herter, "The Biological Aspect of Human Problems," 
1911, p. 222. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 67 

Nothing, then, short of physical necessity or moral 
incompetency, would seem to justify parents in any 
anti-biological system which subordinates the home 
to the school. 

The rapidly increasing tendency in the United 
States to this delegated parenthood is in large part 
an imitation of the English practice, but the con- 
ditions are, with some exceptions, so different in the 
two countries that imitation may be little more than 
an imported fashion. The English Public School is 
a natural consequence, in part of the English habit 
of living on large rural estates, and in part of the 
migration of many parents to the colonies. A 
home-life remote from the opportunities of educa- 
tion makes the deportation of children to schools 
a social necessity. A landed aristocracy and a 
World-Power must be supplied with places of 
safe-deposit for children. The American inclina- 
tion to accept the same system has, however, as a 
rule, had a precisely opposite origin, — the move- 
ment of the prosperous, not toward isolation, but 
toward aggregation; not to the country or the 
colonies, but to the city, where plain habits, fresh 
air, and resources of play are lacking, and where 
children are likely to suffer because of the business 
interests or the social tastes of their parents. The 
boarding-school becomes thus a ransom paid for 
the privilege of living in the city. The parents 
love their children, but not enough to adjust their 
own lives to the welfare of their children. Indeed, 



68 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

the children often find themselves happier away 
from home than in it. Such a situation may be 
inevitable, but it must suggest to many parents 
keen self-reproach ; for they are not only confessing 
that their circumstances or habits are inconsistent 
with the rearing of children, but are forfeiting the 
best chance which life can give for the enrichment 
and refining of their own characters. " There is 
no task/' a distinguished Englishman has said, 
" which life brings with it, at least to the average 
man, calculated to raise him so much as the task 
of educating his own children." * 

It is interesting to observe, still further, that the 
principle of deportation thus applied to the children 
of the prosperous does not essentially differ from 
the principle long accepted by scientific charity as 
appropriate to the children of the destitute. A 
generation ago it was discovered that the children 
of the street must be transferred to the healthier 
environment of the country if their moral and 
physical restoration were to be seriously under- 
taken ; and the placing-out system has become the 
prevailing practice of child-saving charities. The 
same method is now applied to the children of the 
luxurious; but there is one important difference. 
The placing-out system for the waifs of the street 
is essentially a family-system. It removes the 
child from an institution and puts him in a home. 

1 Sir J. Seeley, "Roman Imperialism and Other Lectures and 
Addresses," 1871, p. 284. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 69 

"An institution boy/' Jacob Riis has said, "makes 
the worst of apprentices ; he is saved from being 
a tough by becoming an automaton." To place 
the child in a home, even with foster-parents, is 
now the accepted principle of child-saving, which 
has emptied the asylums and refreshed the country. 
The opposite of this procedure, however, still 
prevails in the backward science of child-saving 
among the rich. Instead of deportation from in- 
stitutionalism to family life, there is an increasing 
placing-out under institutional conditions, and the 
difficult problem is thus presented to the school of 
converting itself into the kind of home which the 
child's own home ought to be. It seems not un- 
reasonable, therefore, to suggest that the time 
has come when the children of the prosperous may 
have the same scientific treatment which has been 
for years applied to the children of the slums; 
and that the function of the family in the develop- 
ment of civilization should not be forgotten even 
by the most privileged class. "God setteth the 
solitary in families" was a sociological fact which 
made the Psalmist sing, "Let the righteous be 
glad ; let them rejoice before God." Admirable 
characters may be, and often are, created 
by devoted teachers, but much more often they 
are unconsciously inherited from parental sacrifices 
and domestic love. To be too busy to bring up 
one's children may be a sincere confession, but it 
is certainly a pitiful one ; and it should not be a 



70 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

surprise if the training of a school, even though it 
engender a self-confident will and a healthy body, 
may develop with difficulty the instincts of con- 
siderateness and self-denial which are the natural 
and unconscious products of a good home. 

If, then, a home reverently accepts responsibility 
for its children and declines to forfeit the happi- 
ness of association with youthful minds and the 
formation of youthful characters, what guidance 
may be found among these decisions and counsels, 
so that they may be, not a daily perplexity and 
weariness, but a constant inspiration and joy? 
There is needed, first of all, a point of view, a prin- 
ciple of action, a philosophy of the family; and 
this general law of fife is provided by the teaching 
of Jesus Christ. Why is it that the family is re- 
garded by him with such peculiar interest as the 
symbol of a Kingdom of God? It is because, in 
that group, each individual comes most directly 
and immediately to self-consciousness and self- 
realization. Within the problem of the family 
stands always the problem of the person, — the 
parent, or the child, — and the mutual discipline 
in self-development and self-restraint which the 
relations of parents and children involve make of 
the family the primary school of human character. 
The teaching of Jesus moves round two foci, — 
his vision of the Kingdom, and his faith in the 
individual. The one is the end he seeks ; the other 
is the means he uses. The Kingdom is a family ; 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 7 1 

but a family is made of persons. Jesus, in other 
words, had what the author of "Ecce Homo" called 
a passion for personality. He detects the possi- 
bilities of each single life and draws out its latent 
powers ; he believes in people before they believe 
in themselves, and by his faith in them makes of 
them what he desires them to be. 

This relation of the teaching of Jesus to 
the individual gives to each family the key of 
its own problem. To discover what each 
member of the family has in him, of resources 
and capacity, and to draw out by persuasion 
and example those potential and often unsus- 
pected gifts, becomes the problem of Christian 
education. Thus the training of children is, from 
its very outset, a highly specialized and delightfully 
diversified undertaking. No two children are alike ; 
their characters are as distinct as their faces. 
However much they may inherit of taste or in- 
clination, they never reproduce with precision the 
aims or temperaments of their parents. Nothing 
is more dramatic in parental experience than the 
sense of baffled surprise with which one observes 
in his children impulses and forces quite unfamiliar 
to himself. One wonders how it is possible for his 
own child to think and feel in such novel ways. 
Yet this unpredictable element in the child is pre- 
cisely what gives to any thoughtful parent a peren- 
nial interest and joy. Each new life is a new prob- 
lem. General principles of training have their 



72 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

place ; but must be given flexibility in application. 
Rigid rules must bend to fit dispositions or talents. 
What has seemed obviously best to the parent may 
be less imperative for the child. The rearing of 
children anticipates in a very curious degree 
what modern education calls the elective system. 
Ways to truth, which parents might distrust 
as untried, may be the best way for the 
child to go. The distinction between lower and 
higher vocations becomes abolished. The only 
question is whether a real vocation, a calling, a 
disclosure of the ideal to the young life, is found. 
A good man of business is better than a weak 
preacher. Greek is as desirable as chemistry, but 
not more obligatory. The purpose of each election 
is to sift out the best that is in the individual and 
to sow that sifted grain in favoring soil. 

Finally the time arrives when the difficult duty is 
laid upon parents of giving to their children the right 
to their own lives, and of repeating, not without a 
profound sense of solitude and self-denial, the great 
words of the Master to his disciples: "It is ex- 
pedient tor you that I go away ; for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you. . . . 
Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, he 
will guide you into all truth." The decisions of 
youth may be different from those which a parent 
might desire, but if the parents have not vitiated 
those decisions by bad example or distorted them by 
undue pressure, the choices of youth may be wiser 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 73 

than the desires of age. "Your old men/' it is 
written, " shall dream dreams, your young men shall 
see visions" ; and many a parent should be on his 
guard lest the dreams which he cherishes for his 
child shut out the visions which the child sees for 
himself. 

We come then, last of all, to that stage of 
domestic experience which succeeds the upbringing 
of children, when the parents, if both have sur- 
vived so long, are left together to face the sunset 
of their lives. Here, in this normal case of family 
history which has been described, there arrives a 
most surprising and beautiful experience, like that 
of a long calm afternoon with lengthening shadows 
and softening light. The absorbing preoccupations 
of business and the multifarious interests of chil- 
dren have slackened in their demands ; the circle 
of friendships has been reduced by the touch of 
death ; and the two lives, which have endured the 
friction of the years and the moulding discipline 
of common joys and sorrows, find themselves re- 
newing, with a curious reiteration, their early 
experiences of mutual devotion, sufficiency, and 
romance. As each grows of less importance to the 
busy world each grows more precious to the other. 
What was once a union built on hope now finds 
new resources in memory. The troubles and griefs 
which they have shared unite them quite as inti- 
mately as the hopes and joys to which they once 
looked forward. As the things which are seen 



74 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

prove to be temporal, so the things which are un- 
seen prove themselves permanent possessions ; and 
among the treasures which they find most secure 
from loss are the treasures which are gone. They 
have come out upon the higher ground of their 
journey together, where the view of life is not shut 
in by the details of passing experiences, but where 
the large outlines of the road behind and before 
become, not only visible, but colored with the 
evening light. They see how strangely they have 
been led, through perils which seemed disastrous, 
and by ways which they did not mean to go ; and 
the few steps which will now lead them into the 
dark bring no alarm, as they recall how their way 
thus far has been more wisely directed than they 
could have asked or dreamed. So, at the end of 
the road, they part, with the tranquil assurance 
that the surprises of the future will be as full of 
blessings as the surprises of the past; and that 
heaven will seem to them like home because home 
with all its vicissitudes has seemed like heaven. 

Is such a family, thus created, thus maintained, 
and thus remembered, impracticable or visionary ? 
On the contrary, this is the simple story of the 
normal American home. The ideals derived from 
the Christian tradition, and perpetuated by the 
spirit of the Gospels, are, in fact, of real authority 
to millions of inconspicuous modern lives. The 
scandals of courts and the outrages of libertines, 
which are reported in their nauseating details 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 75 

by the sensational press, are as remote from these 
experiences of the typical American family as a 
revolution in China or a war in Tripoli. The 
" forgotten millions" still find in the experiences 
of the home the essential meaning of life, and in 
the teaching of Jesus its best interpreter. 



Ill 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 

The practicability of the Christian life meets 
its second test when one passes from the problems 
which confront the institution of the family under 
the conditions of the modern world, and faces the 
still more serious and perplexing problems presented 
by the world of money-making and wage-earning, 
of modern business and the modern industrial order. 
Is it possible to maintain the ideals of Christian 
duty amid the greed and scramble, the merciless 
competition and exploitation of the commercial 
world ? Can one in these days make a living and 
at the same time make what may be reasonably 
called a life? Can one gain the world without 
losing his own soul ? On what terms may a disciple 
of Jesus Christ participate in the conflicts and 
competitions of modern business? Must not a 
modern man, if his business is not to be wrecked 
or his ideals drowned, construct his life in water- 
tight compartments, so that his faith may hold up 
his business without invading it, and his business 
float without dependence on his faith ? 

It is not uncommon, at the present time, to hear 
these questions answered by an indignant and 

76 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 77 

passionate assertion that a Christian life in the 
business world is no longer possible. Conviction 
on this point has become so deep and intense as to 
be an important article in the creed of social revo- 
lution. The prevailing and inevitable forms of all 
trade, it is confidently urged, are essentially im- 
moral; in small affairs a form of gambling; in 
large affairs a form of war. One cannot touch the 
pitch of modern business without being defiled. 
Gain to one man is necessarily loss to others. 
Prosperity for the few involves destitution for the 
many. As the rich grow richer, the poor grow 
poorer. "It is only the densest ethical ignorance/' 
one such indictment of modern society reads, 
"that talks about a Christian business life, for 
business is now intrinsically evil. . . . There is 
no such thing as an ethical bargain. . . . There 
are no honest goods to buy or sell. The hideous 
competitive war makes the industrial order seem 
like the triumph of hell and madness on the earth." 1 
"To-day," another advocate of social revolution 
says, "every successful business man is an extor- 
tioner. . . . The business man who is not willing 
to be a wolf cannot remain in his business." 2 
"Competitive commerce," a much more controlled 
and judicial observer of the times has remarked, 
"pits men against one another in a gladiatorial 

1 G. D. Herron, "Between Caesar and Jesus," 1899, pp. 26, 27. 
2 Bouck White, "The Carpenter and the Rich Man," 1914, 
pp. 59, 60. 



78 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

game in which there is no mercy and in which ninety 
per cent of the combatants finally strew the arena. 
. . . The gentlest and kindliest friends and neigh- 
bors . . . will drain the strength of their men and 
pay their female employees wages on which no girl 
can live without supplementing them in someway." 1 
Such a condition of inevitable criminality a disciple 
of Jesus Christ must pledge himself to overthrow. 
"The worst charge that can be made against a 
Christian," it is said, "is that he attempts to justify 
the existing order. . . . Revolution is the Chris- 
tian's business." 2 Economic revolution becomes 
the necessary antecedent of a revival of religion. 
A practicable Christianity must be postponed until 
the existing structure of modern business is over- 
thrown, and a new world built on its ruins. 

It must be at once admitted that many signs of 
the business world go far to justify these demands 
for radical change. Business is often conducted 
as though efficiency compelled participation in a 
pitiless and insolent war. The greed of employers 
or the indifference of absentee owners may be 
responsible for the physical or moral ruin of the 
employed; and, on the other hand, the reck- 
less hate or inflammable ignorance of wage- 
earners may wreck the very business on which 
their income depends. With still more op- 

1 W. Rauschenbusch, " Christianity and the Social Crisis," 
1908, p. 265. 

2 G. D. Herron, "The New Redemption," 1893, pp. 141, 143. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 79 

pressive effect the forces of employers and em- 
ployed, instead of fighting with each other, not in- 
frequently combine in a conspiracy against the 
consumers of their product, and extort from a 
non-combatant public the price of industrial 
peace. Thus the various incidents of war, — 
alliances, treaties, strategy, raids, and pitched 
battles, — are reproduced in the story of labor 
conflicts; and the industrial ideal, now frankly 
accepted by many leaders as satisfactory, is a state 
of organized opposition between two disciplined 
armies, each with its own class-consciousness, its 
own weapons, its authority to arbitrate, and its 
securing of peace, like the nations of Europe, by 
maintaining a fighting force too strong to be 
attacked. Finally arrives the practical application 
of this creed of hostility in the " direct action " 
of the modern Syndicalist. " Capital," it is pas- 
sionately maintained, " has no rights which labor 
is bound to respect. We produce everything ; we 
mean to have everything. . . . Ours is a constant 
war, and the end of it is the overthrow of society 
and the abolition of the private ownership of 
capital." * 

Here, then, is a test of the Christian life 
which is unquestionably very severe. The 
processes of business are so beset by solicitations 
to oppression and fraud; the habit of acquisition 
is so hard to supplement by the habit of distribution ; 

1 The Survey, Apr. 6, 191 2, p. 80. 



80 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

the prehensile hand becomes so reluctantly the open 
palm ; the rewards of illegitimate success are so im- 
mediate and alluring, while the rewards of integrity 
seem so remote and intangible ; that the man of 
business must be regarded as the most directly 
and gravely tempted of modern men. The solemn 
warning of Jesus Christ is verified in the business 
world to-day on a scale and with a conspicuousness 
which were inconceivable in Galilee: " Children, 
how hard is it for them that trust in riches to 
enter into the Kingdom of God." 

Yet, even when the severity of this test is 
frankly recognized must it be regarded as one 
which it is impossible to meet ? Is modern business 
essentially and incurably evil ? Must the disciple of 
Jesus Christ either retreat from it to some communis- 
tic organization of uncompetitive living, or else trans- 
form it by social revolution into an industrial order 
which is consistent with the Christian life ? And 
even if that economic transformation were ac- 
complished, would it insure a purification of the 
motives and emancipation from the self-interest and 
greed which taint and blight the business world to- 
day ? Is the human inclination to compete a mere 
product of capitalistic society which would vanish 
with the nationalization of industries and the aboli- 
tion of the wage-system ? Is it certain that, as Bebel 
once said, "To accomplish the expropriation of the 
instruments of production is to lay a new founda- 
tion for society. Not only industry, agriculture, 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 8 1 

commerce and education, but marriage, science, 
art, society, — in short, all human life will then 
be transformed." 1 

When one turns with these questions to 
the teaching of Jesus Christ he finds, it is 
true, many affirmations concerning the spirit- 
ual risks of a business life which are as unmeasured 
as those of any modern revolutionist. "Lay not 
up for yourselves treasures upon the earth " ; "Sell 
that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven"; "Thou fool . . . that 
layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich 
toward God." When, however, one inquires for 
the way of deliverance from competitive greed and 
degrading commercialism, he hears in Jesus a note 
quite distinct from that of economic change. 
"Cleanse first," he says, "that which is within the 
cup and platter." "From within, out of the heart 
of man, proceed . . . thefts, covetousness, deceit, 
pride, foolishness." "The Kingdom of God 
cometh not with observation ... for behold, 
the Kingdom of God is within you." The fun- 
damental evils of industrialism, in other words, 
are not mechanical, but ethical; not primarily 
of the social order, but of the unsocialized 
soul. No rearrangement of production and dis- 
tribution can of itself abolish the commercial in- 
stincts of ambition and competition, or even the 
baser desires of theft, covetousness, and deceit. 

1 "Die Frau und der Sozialismus," iote Aufl., 1891, s. 261. 

G 



82 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

"Out of the heart of men" these sins have pro- 
ceeded, and in the heart of man they must be sub- 
dued. The old order of industry is tottering be- 
cause it has not been ethically maintained ; the new 
order could not survive a year unless administered 
by unselfish minds and cooperative wills. Through 
whatever door the better future may be entered, the 
master-key is not that of circumstance but that of 
character. 

Thus, the fallacy of the socialist programme is 
not in its radicalism, but in its externalism. It 
proposes to accomplish by economic change what 
can be attained by nothing less than spiritual re- 
generation. Its programme depends for efficacy 
on unselfishness, brotherliness, and love of ser- 
vice, but no way for the training of these virtues 
is provided, or indeed advised. The transforma- 
tion of business methods would, it is assumed, 
convert the same people who are now brutally self- 
seeking and cynically cruel, into agents of mag- 
nanimity, fraternity, and justice. To Jesus, on the 
other hand, the root of commercial wrongs is in 
commercialized desire. The force of competition 
is not one which can be abolished, but it is one 
which can be converted. It is the natural expres- 
sion of the desire to achieve, to accomplish, to 
measure one's powers, to do one's best. If not 
directed to money-making, it may be directed to 
the attainment of place or power ; and an indus- 
trial order which prohibited commercial competi- 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 83 

tion might offer an unprecedented opportunity for 
political or administrative strategy. The only 
practical problem, therefore, is to apply the prin- 
ciple of competition to beneficent ends. It is like a 
rushing stream which may work disaster but which 
may be transformed by science and industry from a 
source of peril into a source of power. Better ma- 
chinery may ease the burden of production, but 
that machinery must have as its engineers better 
men. Business under any conceivable economic 
readjustment will remain a scene of contention and 
self-seeking unless it be lifted to the level of a spir- 
itual opportunity and utilized as an instrument for 
the Kingdom of God. 

These considerations lead the disciple of Jesus 
Christ to a renewal of interest in the world as it is, 
with all its manifest failings and sins, its iniquity 
and injustice, its excessive wealth and its grievous 
need. The creation of a more favorable environ- 
ment remains the task of economic reform, in which 
the Christian life eagerly cooperates. Better 
housing, better conditions of labor, better sanita- 
tion and education, the protection of childhood, 
disability and old age, the checking of the drink- 
habit and of commercialized vice, — all these, and 
many other ways of social amelioration invite the 
participation of those who look for the "new heaven 
and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.' ' 
Yet, however loyally the disciple of Jesus Christ 
may enlist for this campaign of social change, and 



84 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

however vividly he may dream of a new industrial 
order more consistent with Christian fraternalism, 
he finds in the teaching of Jesus no encouragement 
to delay discipleship until that better world arrives. 
On the contrary, he finds set before him the much 
more difficult task of creating the characters which 
may utilize the better order when it comes. 

Here is no issue between environment and 
personality as factors in social progress. The 
material and the spiritual, the external and the per- 
sonal, are as essential allies as hands or wings. 
The teaching of Jesus is not a substitute for hygiene 
or recreation or industrial partnership ; but it re- 
calls a generation which fancies that external change 
will insure moral redemption to the spiritual condi- 
tions of effective reform. Character, it teaches, is 
a creator as well as a product. To postpone the 
Christian life until a propitious environment arrives 
is to surrender the right to create that environ- 
ment. If a new social order must be the 
preliminary condition of a practicable Christianity, 
then it would seem probable that the new social 
order could get on without Christianity. If the 
Christian life is to be practicable anywhere, it 
must be so here. "Now is the accepted time; 
now is the day of salvation." The Christian's 
primary business is not to anticipate that a change 
in economic conditions will relieve him of the prob- 
lem of social redemption ; but to apply himself to 
the much more arduous and audacious task of 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 85 

redeeming the world as it is, and of justifying the 
promise of those " great voices in heaven saying, 
'The kingdoms of this world are become the King- 
dom of our Lord and of His Christ.'" One of the 
most wholesome propositions with which the prob- 
lems of the industrial world have been approached 
is that which the late Pope Leo XIII announced 
in 1 89 1 at the beginning of his Encyclical on the 
condition of labor. "Let it be laid down in the 
first place," he said, "that humanity must remain 
as it is. It is impossible to reduce human society 
to a level. There is nothing more useful than to 
look at the world as it really is." 

Assuming, then, that humanity is to remain for 
the present as it is, one may proceed to inquire 
how the men and women of this present world 
may conduct their business, make their commer- 
cial decisions, estimate their successes, win their 
rewards, and adjust themselves to the indus- 
trial order, in ways which might commend them- 
selves to the mind of Jesus Christ. 

When one turns for an answer of this question 
to the Gospels, he must, first of all, be on his 
guard against excessive expectations. The world in 
which Jesus worked and taught was in its form 
and method two thousand years away from the 
business world of to-day. The provincial life of 
Galilee, the racial exclusiveness of Jerusalem, and the 
habits of a primitive peasantry, which created the 
industrial environment of the Gospels, make it 



86 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

impossible to find in them specific instructions 
concerning the unprecedented problems of the mod- 
ern industrial world. Rights of combination and 
organization, adjustments of trusts and unions, the 
scope of private initiative and the need of collective 
control, — these critical problems of the twentieth 
century would have been completely unintelligible 
to a man of the first century. T.o construct a 
science of " Christian economics" in the sense of 
regulating modern industry by the specific direc- 
tions of the Gospels, is as impracticable a task as to 
plan that the multiplying millions of Jews in 
the United States shall return to the primitive 
conditions of Palestine. Each age has to meet 
its own economic problems ; and each land has set 
before it the new task of becoming, in due time, 
a Holy Land. 

It must be still further recognized that, however 
weighty and significant the social message of the 
Gospels may be, it was not to this end that the 
teaching of Jesus Christ was specifically directed. 
"The mind of the Teacher was primarily turned 
another way. . . . His social teaching was a by- 
product of his religious mission." 1 "Neither the 
teaching of Jesus," as Troeltsch has said, in begin- 
ning his exhaustive study of Social Christianity, 
"nor the growth of the early Church, is the product 
of a social agitation or the consequence or corollary 

1 Cf. F. G. Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 
1900, pp. 75-79. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 87 

of a class-conflict. . . . The great redemptive 
hope of the Kingdom of God on which the teaching 
is based and which inspires the whole Church, is 
not the hope of a perfected social condition . . . 
but the moral and religious ideal of a world under 
God's unobstructed rule, where all true values of 
the spiritual life will have their justification and 
recognition. . . . Here is the fundamental truth 
from which one's study must proceed." 1 

These qualifications, however, do not make the 
teaching of Jesus ccncerning the business world 
either obsolete or unimportant. On the contrary, 
they are precisely what give to that teaching its 
quality of universality. The remoteness of his 
career frees his message from local limitations ; its 
spiritual nature lifts it above the economic issues 
of the modern world. Specific regulations for 
the conduct of business are not prescribed by 
him; but the much more important teaching 
of an attitude toward business, a habit of mind, 
a principle of interpretation to be applied to busi- 
ness, is a distinct and unmistakable element of 
the Gospels. 

In the first place it should be noticed 
that the teaching moves with a peculiar 
sympathy among the problems and interests 
of trade and labor, and finds in the business of 

*E. Troeltsch, "Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirche," 
191 2, s. 15. The long foot-note (ss. 17-19) elaborates this 
view and examines others. 



88 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

the world abundant illustrations and types of 
Christian discipleship. When with reiterated 
emphasis and varied figures of speech Jesus de- 
scribes the Kingdom of God which it is his mission 
to found, it is the workers of the world, doing their 
daily business, who seem to him most typical of 
the kingdom and its aims. The sower in the field, 
the shepherd leading his flock, the merchant buy- 
ing pearls, the fisherman casting his net, the 
laborer waiting to be hired, the householder dig- 
ging his wine-press, — these, and people like these, 
stand out in his teaching, not as though concerned 
with secular and unsanctified vocations from which 
they have to free themselves if they would enter 
the Christian fellowship, but as witnesses of the 
sanctity of labor, as types of the practical religion 
of a working world, as concerned with tasks not in- 
consistent with discipleship. In other words, the 
attitude of Jesus to the world of business is not 
that of an economist, or a revolutionist, but that 
of an idealist, who discerns behind the ordinary prac- 
tices of productive labor and commercial exchange 
the possibility of a spiritual enterprise. Precisely 
as the life of the family, which may represent noth- 
ing more than a petty collision of self-seeking wills, 
is taken up into the idealism of Jesus and becomes 
his symbol of God's love for man, so the buying and 
selling, the hiring and producing, of the business 
world, though it may abound in sordidness and 
brutality, is taken up into the same idealism of 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 89 

Jesus and becomes a school of character, a field for 
the religious life, a parable of the Kingdom. The 
monastic ideal of the Christian life dictated an 
abandonment of the work of the world for the 
saving of one's own soul. The ideal of Jesus, on 
the other hand, proposes a utilization of the work 
of the world for the saving, not of one's own soul 
alone, but of the world itself. Not the rejection, 
but the consecration of work ; not a retreat from 
the world, but a victory over the world; not an 
ascetic, but an athletic religion, is the teaching 
of the Gospels. "I must be about my Father's 
business," said Jesus at the beginning of his career ; 
— and at the end he says again, "I have finished 
the work which Thou gavest me to do." 

Here, then, is at least a starting-point for the 
disciple of Jesus Christ in his estimate of business 
life. The forms of industrial activity change with 
each successive age. Invention, discovery, ma- 
chinery and organization, revolutionize business 
methods in ways which the teaching of Jesus could 
not anticipate or judge. The Gospels are not a 
text-book of mechanics, but a source-book of power. 
The teaching of Jesus was not commercial, but 
spiritual. The purpose of Jesus was not to make 
rules, but to make men. The New Testament is 
not a Book of Laws, but a Book of Life. And yet, 
through the constantly changing mechanism of 
business may work the unchanging power of the 
Christian life. What the sower and fisherman, the 



90 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

steward and hired servant, were to Jesus in Galilee, 
that the inventor and manufacturer, the trustee 
and the wage-earner, may be to-day. Through 
their business, and not apart from it, or round it, 
is the way of their discipleship. If a practicable 
Christianity is to be discovered under the conditions 
of the modern world, it must be found within the 
forms of business which are essential to the work 
of modern men. 

What, then, one may ask, is that aspect of busi- 
ness which in any age may encourage the faith of 
the idealist and may give to the concerns of 
trade a touch of dignity and even of beauty? 
It is, according to the teaching of Jesus, the 
part which the business world may take in 
fulfilling the supreme law of the Christian life, — 
the Law of Service. Here is the great word in 
which the social ideal of Jesus is disclosed. " Who- 
soever will be chief among you, let him be your 
servant, even as the Son of man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister." Success, leader- 
ship, distinction, that is to say, are all to be esti- 
mated by their contribution to service. One's life 
is not one's own, but is committed to one's keeping, 
to be used and accounted for as by a trustee. 
"It is as a man travelling into a far country who 
called his own servants and delivered unto them his 
goods." One does not own the talents entrusted 
to him, he owes them. "After a long time the Lord 
of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them." 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 9 1 

The teaching is applied to the whole of life, 
to the responsibilities of thought, duty, or 
affection, as much as to those of trade. Yet the 
language which Jesus chooses to express this com- 
prehensive thought is that of business life. 
"Unto one he gave five talents, to another 
two, and to another one ; to every man accord- 
ing to his several ability." The doctrine of 
service, therefore, is primarily and immediately 
applicable to the business world. Money is not 
owned, but owed. The man of business must 
be able to repeat his Master's saying, "I am 
among you as one that serveth." The condem- 
nation of the man with one talent was not because 
he had misused it or wasted it, but because he had 
not set it to serve. He had fancied his duty dis- 
charged when he returned the loan undiminished. 
"Lo, there thou hast that is thine." But the owner 
demands the utilization of his capital, "Thou 
oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers." 
A talent hidden means a service unfulfilled. It 
is the sin, as Browning says : — 

"... Of each frustrate ghost, 
The unlit lamp and the ungirt loin." 

The business world, then, must submit to this 
test of service. The business man who is primarily 
concerned, not with serving but with saving, not 
with creation but with corruption, is but a mod- 
ern instance of "that servant who knew his 



92 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Lord's will and prepared not himself." He says 
in his heart: "My Lord delayeth His coming," 
. . . but "The Lord of that servant will come in a day 
when he looketh not for him . . . and will appoint 
him his portion with the unbelievers." The man 
of business who, as Edmund Burke said of "all 
persons possessing any portion of power," is 
"awfully impressed with an idea that he acts in 
trust and that he is to account for his conduct in 
that trust to the one great master, author, and 
founder of society," 1 is what Jesus called "the 
faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord hath 
made ruler over his household." . . . "Blessed is 
that servant whom his Lord when He cometh, 
shall find so doing." 

Such is the searching test which the teaching of 
Jesus applies to the business world; and it is a 
test which the present generation is in an extraor- 
dinary degree inclined to accept. Many aspects 
of the Gospels have for the great majority of modern 
minds nothing more than a meagre and declining 
interest. The mysteries of Christology, the prob- 
lems of eschatology, the evidence of miracles, even 
the assurances of immortality, which have seemed 
in other periods the critical questions of New Testa- 
ment interpretation, have surrendered their place 
in the foreground of thought to the more pressing 
and appealing problems of obligation and oppor- 

1 "Reflections on the Revolution in France," etc., ed. 1790, 
p. 138. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 93 

tunity created by the unprecedented conditions of 
the modern industrial world. The life that now is, 
with its conflicts and confusions, its pathos and trag- 
edy, has crowded out from many minds all thought 
of the life which is to come, and the desire to ful- 
fil one's part "in this present world," to sanctify 
oneself for others' sakes — or, as the philosophers 
say, to realize oneself in the world of the common 
good — has become the working creed of many a 
modern man. One word sums up this practical 
confession. It is the word Service. No Christian 
hymn is sung by modern congregations with more 
complete acceptance of its teaching than that of 
Wesley : — 

"To serve the present age, 
My calling to fulfil, 
O may it all my powers engage 
To do my Master's will." 

No period in history has been able to appreciate 
so fully the meaning of the Gospel paradox, 
" Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be 
your servant." 

The teaching of Jesus is, in fact, the uni- 
versalizing of a principle which already con- 
trols great numbers of modern lives. " Social ser- 
vice" has become a technical or professional 
vocation, in which certain trained specialists en- 
gage ; but in the language of the Gospels the ordi- 
nary work of the world and its prosaic cares are 
types of social service. In them, as truly as in 



94 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

almsgiving, one is called not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister. In his office or factory the disciple of 
Jesus Christ is called to repeat his Master's precept, 
" If any man desire to be first, the same shall be . . . 
servant of all." Not the philanthropist alone, or 
even chiefly, as he sacrifices a fragment of his time and 
life for social service, but the man of business doing 
his work amid the competition and confusion of 
the commercial world, may receive the Master's 
commendation, "Well done, good and faithful 
servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
" When we try to serve the world," a distinguished 
physician has lately said in his admirable book, 
" we touch what is Divine. Service is one of the 
ways by which a tiny insect like one of us gets a 
purchase on the whole universe." 1 The law 
of service is, in short, among the problems of 
conduct what the law of attraction is in the 
physical world. It gives to the individual life its 
orbit round a larger centre, and sets it in a uni- 
verse of order instead of in a fortuitous concourse 
of atoms drifting in a meaningless world. 

If, then, these are the terms on which a Chris- 
tian life is practicable in a modern business world, 
if business methods must be justified by the prin- 
ciple of service or be condemned and overthrown, 
it becomes of critical interest to inquire whether 
the existing industrial order is in any degree capable 
of meeting this test. Have prevailing business 

1 R. C. Cabot, " What Men Live By/' 1914, p. 85. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 95 

customs sunk irretrievably into a sordid and vulgar 
commercialism, or do their ways of operation and 
tendencies of reform point to a possible revival of 
industrial idealism ? No one can recall to himself 
the many and flagrant instances of cynical self- 
interest and unscrupulous scheming which have of 
late been brought to light, without being tempted 
by the creed of social pessimism. No indictment 
of the existing industrial world, and no provocation 
of revolution, is so serious as the suicidal attempts 
still recklessly made to maintain the present condi- 
tions of industry by brutality, bribery, or fraud. 
Yet if one can detach his attention from these 
shocking evidences of business sins, and consider 
the nature of business as a whole, in its normal 
processes of buying and selling, producing and dis- 
tributing, nothing is clearer than the fact that this 
organization of industry is essentially and on a 
vast scale an enterprise of social service. The 
process may be often interrupted and at times 
diverted from its natural course, but in its total effect 
and general intention business life exists and 
flourishes only as it serves social need. There are, 
an English economist has said, " risks and uncer- 
tainties in business . . . but to the men of business 
who are trying to do business the gambling ele- 
ment is a difficulty and a nuisance. Business of 
every kind is organized to cater for the wants of 
the public." * Capital, in other words, is valueless 

1 Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," 1910, p. 195. 



96 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

unless it is set to earn, and the best way for it to 
earn is to serve. The most obvious source of 
personal profit is to discover what other people 
want and to make it for them or bring it to them. 
A brilliant young Englishman has lately remarked 
that "the horror of our present European civiliza- 
tion^ is in its being "predominantly selfish." 1 
That is as if one should say that the trade of the 
sea, because it is predominated by the desire for 
gain, is a horrid scene of piracy. Selfishness is 
indeed conspicuous enough in business, and pirates 
and buccaneers still roam the seas of modern trade. 
But the vast majority of business men, like the 
vast majority of mariners, apply their self-interest, 
not to scuttling rivals, but to supplying the markets 
of the world, and get profits in their business, not 
by robbing other people, but by serving them. 
The practical condition of the business world, in 
short, is like that already considered in the institu- 
tion of the family. Abuses are so conspicuous and 
sensational publicity is so exaggerated, that the pro- 
portions of truth may be quite obscured and the 
foundations of integrity seem to totter. The fact 
is, however, that just as the normal modern family 
is quite unscathed by temptations to wandering 
desire, so the normal business man buys and sells, 
employs and invests, without a taint of the treachery 
or knavery which occasionally infect business life. 
Instead of being involved in a system of lucrative 

1 W. Temple, "The Kingdom of God," 1912, p. 75. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 97 

looting, he is engaged in one of the most creditable 
of human occupations, making or exchanging what 
people need, and receiving from them what he 
needs himself. Normal business is of advantage 
to buyer and seller alike. "The honorable pur- 
chaser and the honorable seller," Bishop Westcott 
once said, "meet in business for the work of citizens. 
Their interest is the same — the right support of 
life." * Instead of being pirates, they are pro- 
ducers and providers. Instead of robbing people 
of what they have, they are giving them what they 
want. 

Indeed, as one thus reconsiders the nature of 
business, he observes that its permanent stability 
and efficiency depend, not on the evils which 
disfigure it, but on the virtues which it pro- 
motes; not on its yielding to corruption, but 
on its preservation of incorruptibility. The vast 
majority of transactions in modern business are 
made on credit, and a system of credit is 
essentially a system of trust, involving a general 
condition of trustworthiness. If it were not the 
general practice of business men to tell the 
truth and keep their contracts the entire fabric 
of modern trade would crumble in a night. 
Even in that centre of popular reproach, the 
stock market, negotiations involving great sums of 
money are ratified by a word or a sign. In short, 
the foundation of modern business is business honor. 

1 "Christian Social Union Addresses/' 1903, p. 63. 



98 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

This truth is not merely of general, but 
quite as legitimately of personal, significance. If 
business were essentially a form of gambling or 
robbery, it would be reasonable to believe, as is 
now often assumed, that the most lucrative en- 
dowments of a business man are audacity, un- 
scrupulousness, and cunning. The fact is, however, 
that for one man who succeeds in business by luck 
or by fraud, a thousand owe their standing in the 
business world to integrity and incorruptibility. 
When an employer is filling a position or proposing 
an advancement, he looks, it is true, for the quali- 
ties of sagacity and alertness, but with much more 
seriousness he looks for the underlying qualities of 
loyalty, insight, and trustworthiness. Character 
is, on the whole, the best foundation for a com- 
petency. The profits of honorable and persistent 
energy are in the long run vastly greater than the 
profits of commercial piracy or speculative reck- 
lessness. The stream of business may be tem- 
porarily blocked, and applied to desolation rather 
than to irrigation, but in the normal course of 
trade the stream of supply waters the fields of 
demand, and the products of those fields in their 
turn feed the engineers who direct the fertilizing 
stream. 

Here, also, it may be added, is a test which 
can be applied to various forms of business, and 
may, in some degree, be made a basis for 
judgment of the relative standing of various call- 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 99 

ings. How directly does any form of business con- 
tribute to social service ; or in what degree does it 
obstruct or oppose the general good ? Some forms 
of business, like farming, manufacturing, the de- 
velopment of new regions, new power, or new 
discoveries, may be at the same time lucrative to 
the individual and enriching to the community. 
Unless perverted in method, they naturally bless 
both those who give and those who take. Other 
forms of business, like the speculating in futures 
and shuffling of securities which make up much of 
what is known as finance, — while they may not 
be discreditable in method, and may even con- 
tribute to a system of exchange, — do not so 
directly add to the volume of social service, and 
instead of being regarded — as is now generally 
the case — as the aristocracy of business, may be 
ranked among the less honorable, even though 
necessary callings. 

In the feudal system of ancient Japan 
the plain people, below the noble and the 
military class, were classified in three groups, — 
farmers, artisans, and merchants. But of these 
the farmers held the highest rank ; next below were 
the craftsmen; and at the bottom of the social 
scale stood the commercial population from 
bankers to shopkeepers. Trading with money was 
less creditable than agriculture or skilled labor. 
The land and the forge soiled the hands less than 
the counting-house and the shop. The condi- 



IOO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tions of modern life may modify this classification, 
— as indeed has happened in Japan, — yet it 
remains true that a good test which a young 
man may apply to the choice of a business career 
is this test of serviceableness. Let him associate 
himself as closely as is practicable with creative, 
productive, or inventive affairs. Let him make 
two blades of grass grow where one grew before. 
Let him make grain grow where there was a desert 
before. Let him be ambitious to make things, 
rather than to make money ; to prosper by service 
rather than by loot; to bear another's burdens 
rather than to "bear" another's stocks. Business 
thus conducted is not only consistent with the 
Christian life, but has its natural issue, not probably 
in a vast fortune with its equally vast temptations, 
but under the fortunate conditions of American 
civilization, in an honorable and sufficient liveli- 
hood, and may permit one to write above the 
hearth of a self-respecting home the great words 
of his Master: "I am among you as one that 
serveth." 

These indications of the essential character of 
business life are, at least in some degree, reassuring. 
Difficult as it may be to adjust commercialism to 
idealism and to achieve success through service, it 
does not appear to be an undertaking which is directly 
contrary to nature, or a hopeless struggle against a 
resistless current. There are, it seems, elements and 
aspects of business, even as it now is, which are not 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD IOI 

inconsistent with the Law of Service, and which 
should suggest some hesitation before committing 
oneself to a creed of social destruction, or repeating 
with the Persian poet : — ■ 

" Could you and I conspire 
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, 
Would we not dash it into bits, and then 
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire ?" 

Yet this story of incomplete adjustment and misused 
opportunity should also teach to every thoughtful 
man of business grave lessons concerning his imme- 
diate duty. If business is not reformed, it is likely to 
be transformed. The alternative to a violent eco- 
nomic revolution is an accelerated economic evolu- 
tion. If capital is to escape confiscation, it must 
accept consecration. Nothing is more obvious than 
the fact that the present industrial order is now on 
probation, and that its justification must be found 
in its contributing both to utility and to justice. 
If it does not serve, it must surrender. 

At this point, then, one is forced to realize that a 
large proportion of business men are promoting a 
serious crisis, not so much by their wickedness as 
by their stupidity. Administration has suppressed 
imagination. They are so preoccupied by the 
day's work and the year's profit as to be unaware that 
a new world is knocking at their door. While the 
disastrous strike at Lawrence in 191 3 was in prog- 
ress, the treasurer of a mill testified that until the 



102 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

storm of unrest broke over his head, he had never 
heard of syndicalism or seen its cloud approaching. 
Thought, reading, and discussion concerning eco- 
nomic questions, not to speak of the imaginings of 
a better future, are more habitual among wage- 
earners than among employers. Custom, tradi- 
tion, routine, and short-sightedness still dominate 
many forms of business and make them the fruitful 
soil of disorder and revolt. Of a considerable section 
of the most privileged class it might be prophesied, 
in the words of Jesus, " They were eating and 
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage . . and 
knew not until the flood came and took them 
all away." 

Here, then, the way of business wisdom — 
not to say of business sanity — becomes clear. 
The many and varied schemes, now so vigor- 
ously undertaken by intelligent employers, 
of conciliation, arbitration, cooperation, profit- 
sharing, and industrial partnership, are not to 
be regarded as forms of beneficence or magna- 
nimity. To initiate them in the spirit of pater- 
nalism or patronage or charity is, in the present 
temper of the working-classes, to foredoom them 
to failure. They represent a candid recognition 
of the fact that the wage-system in its bare economic 
form must be supplemented, if it is not to be sup- 
planted ; that the line of division between employer 
and employed must be effaced by f raternalism, if it 
is not to be obliterated by socialism. Schemes of 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 103 

industrial reform must be incorporated with the 
business, adapted to the type of industry con- 
cerned, and charged to production. The proper 
payment for them is not gratitude, but loyalty. 
They are one form of evidence that the industrial 
order, imperfect as it is, may be developed by intelli- 
gence and ingenuity into a system of mutual ad- 
vantage, which is certainly more accessible, and may 
perhaps be more durable, than the vague ventures 
which social revolution now so lightly proposes to 
make. 

Thus by an unexpected and tortuous road the 
last developments of business life have brought the 
modern world round to new applications of Christian 
idealism. The teaching of Jesus, which announces 
that social stability is dependent on social service, 
is verified by the industrial schemes which the most 
discerning of employers are utilizing to-day. The 
conditions of the modern business world, with all 
their shocking evidences of iniquity and greed, do not 
completely preclude a practicable Christianity. 
Marcus Aurelius said of the luxuries of Rome, "It 
is possible for a man to live in a palace without want- 
ing . . . such-like show." * With the same recog- 
nition of grave, yet not unsurmoun table, difficulties 
one may now say, It is possible for a man to live 
in the world of business, with all its sins of gam- 
bling and speculation, without wanting such-like 
show. Commercial opportunity is like the exceeding 
1 "Meditations," I, 17; tr. Long, 1864. 



104 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

high mountain where the devil showed to Jesus the 
kingdoms of this world and said, " All these things 
will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
me " ; and the business man of to-day is a simpleton 
if he does not recognize that at any moment he 
may be tempted of the devil. Yet, it is precisely 
this victory of the Christian life over the solicita- 
tions of commercialism which creates leadership 
in the modern world as it did in Galilee. The man 
of business is called to wrestle against the rulers of 
the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places, but it is not impossible for him 
to withstand in the evil day, and — what is even 
harder — having done all, and attained the possi- 
bility of luxury and ostentation, still to stand. 

The conflicting currents of modern business life 
meet, as two rivers, the Arve and the Rhone, meet 
near Geneva. One is a glacial torrent, swift and tur- 
bid with the melting of the snows ; the other a broad 
stream, flowing down through pasture banks in an 
untroubled current. For a time the muddy torrent 
seems in complete control, and the transparent Rhone 
is submerged and defiled ; but by degrees the glacial 
impurities sink beneath the larger stream, and the 
Rhone sweeps unpolluted to the sea. So meet the 
forces of commercialism and idealism in modern 
trade, and to many a looker-on it seems as if the result- 
ing river must be a turbulent and destructive stream. 
Steadily, however, let the springs of idealism, which 
lie far back in the high places of Christian faith, 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 105 

send down their full supply, and by degrees the 
angry rush of reckless self-interest may be sub- 
merged in a clearer stream, and the Rhone of a 
purified industrialism may flow to the ocean of 
human service, unvexed and free. 



IV 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 

The indications of the nature of modern business 
which have been observed, though they may appear 
to make the Christian life not wholly impracticable, 
are of too general a character to give definite 
direction among the immediate problems of one's 
own affairs. Behind these large aspects of the 
industrial world lie more intimate questions of the 
use and abuse of money which meet one in the daily 
conduct of a modern life. One may dream of a 
time when private ownership shall be looked back 
on as a nightmare and money shall have become a 
discarded symbol ; but, for the moment, here is a 
world in which one must in some way earn his 
living, invest and spend his money, and make such 
adjustment as is practicable between his conscience 
and the existing order of industry. Is, then, the 
Christian life practicable here ? Can one get any 
guidance from the teaching of Jesus Christ among 
the perplexing problems of his own business affairs ? 
What shall he do to be saved, not merely in his 
Church, but in his office, or his counting-room, or 
on his farm ? 

These questions of the use of money can have, it 
is true, but meagre interest for that great number of 

1 06 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 107 

people who have no money to use, and who live in 
daily apprehension lest even their daily wage may 
fail. To consider the ethics of property may seem 
like cruel irony while the antecedent problem of the 
distribution of property is still unsolved. Yet, 
even though the uses of money are unimportant to 
those who have no money, there remain a great 
many people to whom money, whether they have 
much or little of it, presents a daily problem and 
care, and the case of these people has had compar- 
atively little consideration. Reformers and phi- 
lanthropists have applied themselves either to the 
case of the very poor, or to the not less pathetic case 
of the very rich. How to relieve tragic destitution, 
and how to restrict vast accumulation, have been 
questions with which social legislation and agitation 
have been almost exclusively concerned. It was, 
indeed, confidently taught by Marx a generation 
ago that modern society would soon and inevitably 
be divided into these two groups, the few that have 
and the many that have not, the Bourgeoisie and 
the Proletariat, each with its own aims and its own 
class-consciousness; and that the irrepressible 
conflict between these two classes could have no 
other issue than the victory of the many and the 
restoration of wealth to those who had created it. 
"Centralization of the means of production and 
socialization of labor at last reach a point where 
they become incompatible with the capitalistic 
integument. The integument is burst asunder. 



108 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

The knell of capitalist private property sounds. 
. . . We have the expropriation of a few usurpers 
by the mass of the people." * 

The course of economic history since the day of 
Marx has, however, not only failed to verify this 
confident prophecy, but has taken a direction alto- 
gether unforeseen by him. Great accumulations of 
capital have, it is true, fallen into a few hands, and 
great numbers of wage-earners still find themselves 
without a margin of income, but a much more 
remarkable characteristic of the present time is the 
unprecedented increase of the middle class, above 
poverty and below wealth, and quite unaware of 
that chasm which, according to Marx, is ever 
widening between them and a stable competency. 
This middle group is indeed not so much a class as a 
movement; not a fixed, but a fluid mass. As a 
whole it is on the way up rather than on the way 
down, a rising rather than an ebbing tide. It is 
this middle-class multitude which gives to modern 
society its vigor and hope, and has, on the whole, 
the best chance of personal and domestic happiness. 
The statistics of savings banks and of life-insurance 
companies, the enormous multiplication of modest 
homes, and the growth of stock corporations with 
their thousands of small holdings are conclusive 
witnesses of this new factor in the social problem. 
"Wherever we look we find a steady increase of 
the middle class. . . . Economic development has 

1 "Capital/' tr. Aveling, 1889, 1, p. 789. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 109 

taken a turn which Marx did not foresee." 1 In 
fact, there is a touch of irony in the war-cry of a 
"class-conscious conflict/' when so many who 
repeat the Marxian formula are not themselves of 
the class which, according to that formula, is alone 
to survive. 

The normal condition of American life is, 
in short, neither one of vast wealth, nor one 
of hopeless destitution, but one which begins with 
modest self-support and ends with a substantial 
competency. To this central body of American 
citizenship — the farmers, the small investors, the 
professions, and the great majority of persons 
employed in business — the Marxian theory of 
" increasing misery " is almost unintelligible. They 
acknowledge no irremediable fixity of condition. 
They are not listening for "the knell of private 
property." They find themselves living in a 
mobile, hopeful, expanding world. They expect 
much for themselves, and still more for their 
children. They educate their children for a higher 
social standing than their own. They observe not 
only that many of the very rich began life without 
money, but that many of the most distinguished of 
inventors, administrators, and politicians began 
life without exceptional opportunity. They are, 
therefore, with good reason, sanguine and ambitious. 

1 Simkhovitch, "Marxism versus Socialism," 1913, pp. 94, 97. 
The entire chapter on "The Disappearance of the Middle Class" 
is conclusive. 



IIO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

The appeal to class-consciousness fails to touch 
them because they have not resigned themselves 
to the consciousness of belonging to a class. The 
way up is open to the humblest of them, if he be 
sober, frugal, honest, and sound in health. 

This vast and rapidly increasing majority — the 
forgotten millions of inconspicuous and industrious 
lives — are not commonly regarded, and do not re- 
gard themselves, as a social problem. They are 
simply minding their own business, reasonably secure 
from the risks of extreme poverty and comparatively 
untempted by the risks of excessive wealth. Their 
case is too prosaic and undramatic to attract 
attention; yet in the conduct of their business 
affairs they are confronted by problems of the use 
of money which are hardly less perplexing than 
those which meet the very rich or the very poor. 
Can one, they ask, expect to make a living without 
running the risk of losing a life ? Can he use his 
money without abusing his neighbor? Is the 
Christian life consistent with the prudent manage- 
ment of one's own affairs? Dismissing from 
consideration for a moment the marginal problems 
of excessive wealth and hopeless poverty, how 
shall that central group of the population who have 
some money to use, so use it as to meet the test of 
Jesus Christ? "Ye cannot serve God and Mam- 
mon," he said in one of his most unqualified utter- 
ances ; but then again he said, "Make to yourselves 
friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness." Is it 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY III 

possible to be a friend of Mammon without being 
a servant of Mammon? May one in the use of 
his money be a servant, not of Mammon, but of 
God, and through friendly use of the Mammon of 
unrighteousness be received into the everlasting 
habitations ? 

These questions may be restated in a somewhat 
more systematic form. If one discriminates among 
the uses of money, he comes upon three different 
ways in which money may be employed, and each 
way has its accompanying moral problems and 
risks. There is, first, the use of money in the 
making of more money, or the ethical problem of 
property ; there is, secondly, the use of money in 
spending, or the ethical problem of luxury ; there 
is, thirdly, the use of money in giving, or the ethical 
problem of benevolence. Each of these personal 
problems meets in varying degree that great num- 
ber of citizens whose level of income is above that 
of mere subsistence ; and each reopens the question 
of the practicability of the Christian life. Can one 
administer his property, regulate his expenditure, 
and direct his philanthropy, in ways which are con- 
sistent with Christian discipleship ? What are 
the principles of ownership, the limits of extrava- 
gance, and the scope of responsibility, which must 
be accepted by a Christian life in a modern world ? 

As to the general question, now hotly debated, 
whether the institution of private ownership itself 
is consistent with social justice, whether, in the 



112 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

phrase of Proudhon, "Property is robbery," 
whether "It is right to rob the robbers/' no specific 
answer can be derived from the teaching of Jesus. 
He lived in a world where such a revolution could 
not have been proposed by any sane teacher, and if 
it were, would not have been intelligible to those who 
heard. The existing fabric of social and political 
life was accepted by Jesus as the material out of 
which the Kingdom of God was to be made. 
Primitive Christianity developed, it is true, a 
temporary communism, in which the confident 
expectation of a Messianic reign led the first dis- 
ciples to have "all things common"; but that 
Pentecostal communism was both a transient and 
a voluntary arrangement. It was the common 
ownership of a loving family rather than the legal 
abolition of the institution of property. Each 
disciple might keep his own possessions, but "not 
one of them said that aught of the things which he 
possessed was his own." 

Modern agitators, therefore, miss the note of the 
Gospels when they describe the teaching of Jesus as 
a message of social revolution, and limit the range 
of his sympathy to a single group. "Whether he 
was a metaphysical personage," it is said, "or, like 
us, one of the sons of time and the children of men, 
the fact is indisputable : Jesus lived, moved, and 
had his being among working-folk. As a day- 
laborer, and later as a leader of day-laborers, 
there is recorded not one friendship of his with 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 113 

people who were not in the worker-crowd, or else 
members of the privileged class who showed 
temperamentally a leaning toward the worker- 
crowd. . . . From the cradle to crucifixion, he 
was proletarily environed. . . . He was utterly 
of the disinherited class." * Fortunately, however, 
for the influence of Jesus on the history of the 
world, the record of his life reports no such 
restricted definition of his purpose. Many an 
outcast and beggar, it is true, found himself re- 
stored to courage and self-respect by the 
sympathy of the wise teacher, but the circle of his 
intimacy held many who were by no means 
of the disinherited class. The fishermen who 
were the first to become disciples were em- 
ployers rather than employed; they "left their 
father with the hired servants and went after him." 
"We have forsaken all," said Peter, "and followed 
thee." At the home of Matthew Jesus sat "with 
many tax-gatherers and sinners." "I must abide at 
thy house," said Jesus to the rich Zacchaeus. 
"And certain women, . . . Mary, called Magdalene, 
. . . and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward, and 
Susanna, and many others, . . . ministered to him of 
their substance." However compassionately, then, 
the heart of Jesus turned to the poor and the toiler, 
it is manifestly inaccurate to affirm that "there is 
recorded not one friendship of his with people who 

1 Bouck White, "The Carpenter and the Rich Man," 1914, 
p. S ff. 



114 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

were not in the worker-crowd" ; or that his thought 
was "fundamentally concerned with the lot of the 
lower-most men in the social mass." The fact is 
that the passion for social revolution which encour- 
ages such an inference was not the passion closest 
to his heart. He was seeking recruits for the King- 
dom of God, and whenever he found a response to 
his ideal of a world dedicated to God, whether it was 
in blind Bartimeus by the roadside, or rich Zac- 
chaeus in his home at Jericho, he said with equal 
appreciation: "Thy faith hath made thee 
whole"; "This day is salvation come to thishouse." 
"In short, his categories of social judgment were 
not those of wealth and poverty." 1 Whatever 
social revolution may be the logical consequence of 
his teaching, he was not a social revolutionist. 
It is impossible to convert the teaching of Jesus 
into that of an industrial agitator. His purpose 
was not revolution, but revelation. He was 
primarily concerned, not with the distribution of 
goods, but with the inspiration of goodness. He 
cared less for social classification than for social 
sanctification. He was not a socialist, but a 
saviour. 

Yet it does not follow from this apparent limita- 
tion that the teaching of Jesus is either silent or 
indulgent concerning the ethics of property. On the 
contrary, and in words whose severity and irony 

X C£. F. G. Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 
1900, p. 205. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 115 

no commentary can obscure, Jesus recognizes the 
tremendous risks which the possession, or even the 
pursuit, of money involves. "How hardly," he 
says, " shall they that have riches enter into the 
Kingdom of God." "It is easier for a camel to go 
through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter 
into the Kingdom of God." "Lay not up for 
yourselves treasures upon earth." "A man's life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth." The modern world ap- 
preciates, as perhaps no generation since the 
time of Jesus Christ has done, the insight and 
precision of these solemn declarations. It is still 
very hard for those who have riches, and often 
harder still for their children, to enter into the 
Kingdom. The abundance of the things which 
one possesses may easily crowd out the ideals in 
which his life consists. The gaining of the world 
may be the losing of one's soul. When Jesus de- 
manded of the rich young ruler that he sell 
whatever he had and give it to the poor, it may 
have been — as Tolstoi, in his own case, found it 
to be — not the harder, but the easier way of re- 
nunciation which was proposed. It may be more 
difficult for one to use money than to abandon it. 
Many a pious soul in the days of the monastic 
system took the vow of poverty, not because it was 
harder to live in a monastery than in the world, 
but because it was the easiest way of refuge from 
the bewildering problems which one who remained 



Il6 THE CHRISTIAN LIEE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

in the world had to meet. What was occasionally 
true in the Middle Ages is universally true to-day. 
The moral problems which the uses of money in- 
volve present the severest test now offered to the 
Christian life in the modern world. "I cannot call 
riches," said Bacon, "but other than the baggage 
of virtue ; the Roman word is better, l impedimenta,' 
for as the baggage is to an army so is riches to 
virtue ; it cannot be spared or left behind, but it 
hindereth the march." * 

What is it, then, which according to the teaching 
of Jesus may justify the ownership of money? 
On what terms may one profess discipleship to 
Jesus Christ and yet concern one's self with the 
accumulation and holding of property? It has 
already been pointed out that the social teaching 
of Jesus lays its central emphasis on the Law of 
Service, and that this test may be directly applied 
to the general conditions of business life. When, 
however, one turns to the immediate problems of 
his own property-holding, he is met by another 
word of the gospels which strikes a more personal 
note. It is the word Stewardship. "Give an 
account of thy stewardship." "Who then is that 
faithful and wise steward? ... Of a truth his 
Lord will make him ruler over all that he hath." 
According to this teaching, one is not an owner, 
but an agent. The Master of the House will come 
at an hour when his servant "looketh not for him," 

i Essays, XXXIV, " Of Riches." 



CHRISTIAN LITE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 117 

and will either make the steward " ruler over his 
household," or will " appoint him his portion with the 
unbelievers." The steward, therefore, is a trustee of 
the estate of God, a laborer together with God for 
the accomplishing of God's ends. The steward 
does not "make" money; he directs the forces 
of God in their productive work. He does not, 
in the language of modern slang, "make good," 
unless he makes goodness. His property is not 
subtracted from the common welfare, but added to 
it. What is wealth to him is not, in Ruskin's 
phrase, "ill-th" to others. His fidelity is that "of 
a steward of the mysteries of God" ; of whom "it 
is required that a man be found faithful." His 
career is successful if, as Milton said, — 

"I have grace to use it so, 
As ever in my great taskmaster's eye." * 

No principle in the teaching of Jesus is more 
conspicuous than this, yet none is more difficult to 
obey. Nothing seems more obviously one's own 
than one's money. One can hide it, save it, spend 
it, or invest it in his own name and for his own 
profit. This, however, is precisely what Jesus so 
suggestively described as "the deceitfulness of 
riches" 2 the illusion of wealth. It deceives one 
with the notion that he is its possessor, when he 
is, in fact, only its steward. This, Jesus says, is he 

1 "Sonnet on Being Arrived at the Age of Twenty-one Years.' ' 

2 Matt. XIII, 22 (a7ra.Tr) = trickery, fraud). "The delusions 
of riches quite stifle the Message.' ' (Weymouth.) 



Il8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

that received the seed among thorns. The word 
grows, but is choked. The man finds himself 
tricked. He thought his money was a seed from 
which good grain would spring, and he discovers 
some day that it bears a crop of thorns. He 
thought it would feed him, and he finds that it 
chokes him. A still more tragic irony of fate may 
meet the inheritor of wealth, when the thrift and 
self-denial of the father which have promoted 
acquisition are succeeded by the slackening fibre 
and increasing self-indulgence of the son. Then, 
as Jesus said, there are added to "the deceitfulness 
of riches" the further and choking thorns of "the 
cares of this world and the lusts of other things" ; 
or, in the solemn words of Paul to young Timothy, 
the "many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown 
men in destruction and perdition." This is the 
paradox of property. To own is to owe. Possession 
means obligation. The more one has acquired, the 
more is required of him. " To whom men^have com- 
mitted much, of him they will ask the more." 
Ownership is stewardship. "Watch, therefore, for 
ye know neither the day nor the hour" ; "Give an 
account of thy stewardship. ' ' Such are the stringent 
terms on which the business of money-making is 
consistent with the Christian life. 

If one proceeds to inquire how this Law 
of Stewardship may be practically tested in his own. 
experience, he is met by two ways of its operation, 
which are the evidences of its vitality and force. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 119 

The first of these is the way of utilization; the 
second is the way of humanization. The first is 
but a special form of that principle which the author 
of " Ecce Homo," in one of his noblest chapters, 
called Positive Morality. The Christian, Professor 
Seeley said, has passed from passive to active human- 
ity ; from "a feeble restraining power to an inspir- 
ing passion"; from "prohibitions to commands." 
"The old legal formula began, 'thou shalt not,' 
the new begins with 'thou shalt.'" "The sinner 
whom Christ habitually denounces is he who has 
done nothing; the Priest and Levite who passed 
by ; the rich man at whose gate Lazarus lay while 
'no man did aught for him' ; the servant who hid 
his talent in a napkin." Efficiency, productive- 
ness, activity, social obligation, are essential ele- 
ments in Christian ethics. Passivity, complacency, 
an introspective and ineffective virtue, are signs 
that one has not passed from the Law to the 
Gospel. "Condemnation passed under the Mosaic 
law upon him who had sinned; . . . Christ's 
condemnation is pronounced upon those who had 
not done good." 

This general law of Positive Morality is re- 
peatedly applied by Jesus to the commercial life. 
Money is made to be utilized. Its deceitf ulness con- 
sists, not only in its tricking one into regarding 
it as one's own, but in the further illusion that 
one may keep it his own. To remain one's own, 
it must be utilized for the common good. That 



120 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

only which one makes serviceable he keeps. 
The servant who digs in the earth and hides his 
Lord's money is cast into the outer darkness. 
The conventionally good are confronted by the 
rebuke: "When ye shall have done all those 
things which are commanded you, say, We are 
unprofitable servants : we have done that which 
was our duty to do." In either case the unprofit- 
ableness is not in doing wrong, but in doing nothing, 
and the tragic penalty to which the man with one 
talent is condemned is not because he has misused 
his trust, but because he has not used it at all. 

The utilization of stewardship thus prescribed 
begins, however, much earlier than is often sup- 
posed. It does not merely dictate the generous 
or beneficent use of money when made. The 
justification of property is not determined by its 
distribution. Stewardship is primarily a matter of 
business itself. It utilizes the forms of trade as 
forms of trust. The unjust steward was not con- 
demned because he had been uncharitable or un- 
sympathetic; on the contrary, his generosity was 
one evidence of his guilt. He "called his 
Lord's debtors" and accepted from each a fraction 
of his indebtedness as discharging his obligation, 
and for this the Lord "commended the unjust 
steward." The culpability lay further back, in the 
relation of the steward to the employer. He "was 
accused unto him that he had wasted his goods." 
No prodigality in distributing his Lord's money 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 121 

could atone for criminality in making it. The 
ethics of stewardship, in other words, begins not 
in one's giving, but in one's getting. Business life 
is itself a moral opportunity. Ideals not utilized 
in business are neutralized in charity. The evi- 
dence of a Christian life in the modern world is 
collected, like the income tax, "at the source." 

It is, of course, true that this utilization of prop- 
erty is in one aspect almost forced upon one by the 
conditions of modern life. One no longer hides his 
money in the ground or wraps it in a napkin. Invest- 
ment in any form applies money to service. Even 
the miser does not bury his money, but sets it to 
earn more money, and in so far may contribute, 
even unconsciously, to the general good. A com- 
mercial enterprise undertaken for nothing else than 
personal gain may be swept into the larger current 
of common service and fulfil a vastly more benefi- 
cent end than was designed. The purposes of 
God may make even the wrath of man to praise 
Him. 

The Christian teaching, however, goes behind 
the fact of utilization and considers the motives 
and consequences of evading or ignoring the 
principle of stewardship. A life, for example, 
surrenders itself to the habits of irresponsible 
and self-indulgent wealth. The instincts of re- 
sponsibility are atrophied through disuse. "Is it 
not lawful for me," one says, "to do what I will 
with mine own?" May I not "fare sumptuously 



122 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

every day?" What is the effect of this unutilized 
stewardship, not only on others, but still more on 
him who has thus wasted his Lord's goods? 
By one of the most curious and tragic operations of 
the principle of utilization, those who refuse to 
conform to it may become the most impressive 
witnesses of its force. These very persons who 
may fancy themselves most free from the burdens 
of life, and who propose to be immune from social 
obligations, not infrequently become the most 
pitiful victims of shattered nerves, spiritual depres- 
sion, and the philosophy of despair. Refusing to 
utilize life for others, they may lose the capacity to 
utilize life for themselves. Abandoning the prin- 
ciple of stewardship, they may forfeit the right to 
ownership, until at last their enervated sensibilities 
and slackened vitality may be the evidence, not 
only that the mastery of their possessions, but that 
self-mastery itself, is lost. 

There is a phrase, appended by Jesus to his 
parable of stewardship, the significance of which is 
at this point disclosed. "If ye have not been 
faithful in the unrighteous Mammon," he says, "who 
will commit to your trust the true riches ? " So far 
the lesson is obvious. If one has been unfaithful 
in that which is least, he cannot expect to be 
trusted with that which is much. The riches of the 
Kingdom are to be reserved for those who have done 
their duty "in this present world." There follows, 
however, a more subtle teaching. "If," Jesus 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 1 23 

goes on to say, "ye have not been faithful in that 
which is another man's, who shall give you that 
which is your own?" How can that be given to 
me which is already my own ? Is it not my own to 
give rather than to receive ? May one's own pos- 
sessions be given to him as a reward? Must he 
be faithful to that which is another's before he 
can be said to own what is his own? Precisely 
this is the searching doctrine of Christian ownership. 
To set apart what is one's own from that which is 
another man's, to fancy the two interests essen- 
tially hostile and the gain of the one to be in the 
same degree the loss of the other, is not only to live 
in a world of robbers and wolves instead of a world 
of brotherhood and love, but it is, still further, to 
fail of real possession, even of the spoils which one 
may secure. What one securely owns is not that 
which is appropriated by him from the common life, 
but that which is utilized by him for the common life. 
His serviceableness is the proof of his ownership. 
He has been faithful to that which is another's, and 
so there is given to him that which is his own. He 
has verified the truth of Dante's teaching con- 
cerning " the higher sphere " : — 

"For there, by how much more they call it ours, 
So much propriety of each in good 
Increases more." 

Seneca, in a striking "Dialogue," defends the 
possession of wealth in terms which are as Christian 
as they are Stoic. "The philosopher," he says to 



124 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Gallio, "will have abundant wealth, but wealth 
acquired without injustice to any, and without 
sordid traffic ; the outflow of which is as honorable 
as the income. . . . He will even have that of 
which he may boast, if throwing open his house and 
admitting people to his property, he can say, 'Let 
every man take whatever he recognizes as his.' 
O, great man, most honorably rich, if, after these 
words, he shall have as much as before !" x 

The case of the irresponsible rich illustrates in an 
extreme form the operation of the principle of 
Utilization, but the same principle, though less 
conspicuous in its action, governs those more 
fortunate lives whose possessions are moderate and 
shifting. Here also ownership, to be secure, in- 
volves utilization. The investor, the employer, 
the man of business, is either a conscious participant 
and willing partner in the world's work, or in de- 
taching himself from the common good he is in 
grave peril of becoming ensnared by the " deceitf ul- 
ness of riches" and, in the end, being owned by that 
of which he thinks himself the owner. There is no 
moral neutrality in the making of money. There 
are, as has been finely said, only two social classes, 
benefactors and malefactors. 2 The man that is 
not doing good is doing harm ; and the harm he 
may do to others is not more permanent and dis- 
astrous than the trick he has played on himself. 

1 "De Vita Beata," Ch. XXIII. 

2 M. Stryker, "Addresses," 1896, p. 96. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 1 25 

These considerations may guide one to some ex- 
tent in many difficult decisions of business life. What 
is my money doing, and what am I doing with it, 
in the daily conduct of my affairs, to satisfy the 
test of stewardship? Am I concerned with any 
creative enterprise, either of hand or of mind ? Is 
there any gain in methods of trade, in standard of 
profession, in efficiency of teaching, in legal pro- 
cedure, in domestic happiness, in neighborly service, 
in civic security, in religious fellowship, through the 
uses to which I put the money which I make? 
Then I have at least escaped from the great illusion 
of the modern world, the " trickery of riches." 
The utilization of my money becomes its justifica- 
tion. The most searching test of the Christian life 
is met as I thus consider, not the uses of my money 
after it is made, but the uses which it serves while 
it is making. However slight may be my part in 
the stewardship of the purposes of God, I may at 
least so conduct my affairs that it shall not be on 
me that the Teacher's eye will fall as he says : 
"If ye have not been faithful in that which is an- 
other man's, who shall give you that which is your 
own?" 

The second test which may be applied to the 
principle of stewardship is that of humanization. 
Economists have, as a rule, studied the processes of 
industry as problems in mechanics. They describe 
the balance of trade, the flow of gold, the rise and 
fall of values, the free competition of equal indus- 



126 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

trial units, and one might easily infer that economic 
science was a form of physical science, dealing with 
tides, or streams, or the balanced equilibrium of 
weights and forces. Such, in fact, was the con- 
clusion of the earlier English economists. The 
laws of social action appeared to them like the laws 
of nature, and the less obstructed these laws were 
by human intervention or modification, the more 
stable and productive industry would be. De 
Quincey said that Ricardo "had deduced a priori 
from the understanding itself laws which first shot 
arrowy light into the dark chaos of materials." 1 
The circumstances of the modern world have, how- 
ever, undermined this system of industrial physics. 
Instead of free and equal units jostling each other 
like atoms in the physical world, we have vast 
aggregations both of capital and labor, in which 
these atoms are merged as in a planetary system ; 
and instead of free competition we have the enor- 
mous development of combination, restricting com- 
petition or excluding it altogether. Yet the effect 
of the earlier economic science still survives in a 
habit of mind which controls many business men. 
They fancy that industry has been proved to be 
automatic in its action, that it is completely inter- 
preted by the laws of supply and demand, and the 
fact that these laws of economic life usually work to 
the advantage of the capitalist does not diminish 

1 " Confessions of an English Opium-eater," Works, 4th ed. 
1878, 1, p. 255. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 1 27 

his faith in them. "Laissez faire," "Mind your 
own business," "Accept the current standards of 
trade/' — these familiar maxims have been not 
only easy to obey, but have seemed to possess the 
further merit of conforming to natural law and of 
illustrating the mechanism of industry. v 

Nothing, however, is more obvious in the 
practical conduct of modern business than its trans- 
formation from a mechanical to a human science. 
The wage-earner who was once treated as a part 
of a machine has emerged into self-consciousness 
and demands consideration as a human being. 
Education has made him observant ; organization 
has made him formidable; and legislation has 
applied itself to his protection and welfare. Fifty 
years ago Ruskin said that economic science in its 
study of the engine of industry had neglected the 
study of the steam which propelled that engine. 
"The largest quantity of work will not be done by 
this curious engine for pay; ... it will be done 
only when the motive-force, that is to say the will 
or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest 
strength by its own proper fuel." * That is pre- 
cisely what all intelligent employers have come, 
however hesitatingly or reluctantly, to recognize. 
The secret of business stability, they have dis- 
covered, is not so much mechanical as ethical. 
Economic laws have their fundamental importance, 
as laws of heat and motion control the construction 

1 "Unto this Last," 1862, p. 23. 



128 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and management of an engine; but through the 
mechanism, shattering it if not utilized by it, works 
the steam of human passions, desires, and needs. 
To ignore that human factor is to court disaster, to 
direct its expansion and its propelling energy is the 
chief task of the man of business to-day. In New 
England at least it will not soon be forgotten that 
the most disastrous strike of this generation oc- 
curred, not because a new law compelled a reduc- 
tion in hours, or even because reduced pay followed 
from this reduction, but because it had not occurred 
to the employing corporations to humanize their 
business, and to give due notice and explanation to 
their employed. The shock of surprise with which 
the pay-envelopes were received ran through the 
inflammable mass of operatives like an electric 
spark and set the town on fire. 

At precisely this point, where expediency and 
justice unite in advising the humanization of indus- 
try, we are met once more by the teaching of 
Jesus Christ. His entire view of conduct was 
based on the conception of a fraternal world. The 
brotherhood of man was his corollary from the 
Fatherhood of God. If the order of the world is 
that of a Father's love, then the order of society 
must be that of a human family. "One is your 
Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." 
" Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is 
my brother." "My brethren are these which hear 
the word of God and do it." "Inasmuch as ye 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 1 29 

have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." It is the 
same teaching which is summarized in the glowing 
and reiterated maxims of the Epistle of John : 
"He that loveth his brother abideth in the light." 
"He that hateth his brother is in darkness." 
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, 
he is a liar." "This commandment have we from 
Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." 
Industrialism, then, if it is to conform to the teach- 
ing of Jesus, must become fraternalism. The busi- 
ness world, as the apostle Paul said of the Christian 
Church, is a body with many members, and "all 
the members of one body being many are one body." 
"The eye cannot say unto the hand, nor again the 
head to the feet," nor still again he who calls himself 
the head of an industry to those whom he calls his 
hands, "I have no need of you." "And whether 
one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, 
or one member be honored all the members rejoice 
with it, that there shall be no schism in the body, 
but that the members should have the same care 
one for another." Here is a conception of business 
as an organism of mutually dependent parts, 
which, it must be admitted, the modern world is 
but slowly approaching. Yet no one can observe 
the signs of the present time without recognizing 
that this conception of a humanized and frater- 
nalized industrialism is now distinctly within the 
horizon of practical experiment. This is the ideal 



130 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

which, however dimly perceived or crudely de- 
scribed, gives momentum and vitality to many a 
scheme of industrial revolution whose economic 
programme may be proved impracticable, but 
whose human appeal remains unanswerable. The 
humanization of industry is the only alternative to 
industrial war. 

A way thus opens, not indeed unobstructed, yet 
not impassable, for a Christian man in the modern 
business world. Let him humanize his business. 
Let him dismiss from his mind the complacency of 
possession which a large proportion of business men 
still cherish, and face the obvious fact that the 
industrial world is in process of transformation. 
What was once a mechanical process, where not 
only looms and furnaces but working-men and work- 
ing-women were parts of a great machine, has 
become an association of human beings, with con- 
flicting desires, with irrepressible passions, with 
unrealized hopes. Such a transformation neces- 
sarily involves maladjustment and disorder, and may 
easily be utilized to promote a programme of class- 
conscious hate and internecine war. The Chris- 
tian idealist, however, cannot regard this insurgence 
of humanity as intrinsically destructive or even 
perilous. The humanization of business must, 
on the contrary, in its final result- be a happy 
redemption from the domination of the machine. 
Business not less than character must finally pros- 
per in a world whose motive-power is not steam, 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 131 

but life. The first onrush of the new consciousness 
may be fitful and passionate, like the first angry 
gusts which precede a cleansing breeze. The new 
force is full of possibilities of disaster, as the force 
of electricity may be a weapon of flame against 
which an earlier generation built its lightning rods 
of defence. The far-sighted and right-minded 
employer, however, applies himself to the inevitable 
and the intensely interesting problem of convert- 
ing a threatening gale into a propelling power, and 
of transforming a dangerous force into an agent 
of service. Formulas of ownership which were 
appropriate to a feudal age of industry are recog- 
nized by him as like the machinery of the last 
century, to be scrap-heaped as antiquated and 
unprofitable. By ingenious application of human- 
ization to his special industry he selects that type 
of cooperation which is congenial and appropriate. 
Without qualification or reluctance he welcomes the 
principle of partnership in production, which assures 
to the wage-earners the right to a share of profits, 
the information which a stockholder may demand, 
and the conditions of industry which are fit for 
human lives. He believes in the capacity of wage- 
earners to understand the nature and limits of his 
business when candidly explained, and to contribute 
to it loyalty instead of capital. By every available 
method he promotes continuity of service and 
diminishes the grave evil of intermittency. He 
describes the business, not as his, but as "ours." 



132 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Among its assets are to be reckoned sanitation, 
health, education, and self-respect. In the present, 
and not wholly unjustified, temper of the wage- 
earners this humanization of business must expect 
to be met by much hostility, suspicion, and even 
bitter attack ; but it has the positive and inalien- 
able satisfaction of being a direct application of the 
teaching of Jesus Christ to the modern world. Its 
failures are, for the most part, not because it is an 
impracticable or untimely venture, but because it 
is undertaken without sufficient knowledge, study, 
or patience. It is not enough for the sense of 
humanization to-day to be generous, self-sacrificing, 
or even prodigal; it must be what the apostle 
Paul described as a " reasonable service." 

These indications of the tendencies and opportu- 
nities of modern business make it not impossible to 
regard the world of money-making, even as it now 
is, with a restrained and rational hope. It is a 
troubled scene of mingled motives, where great 
numbers of men are what Hobbes called wolves to 
their neighbors; where the greed of gain makes 
treachery a permissible custom and duplicity a 
studied science ; where the ignorant and defenceless 
often find themselves wrestling against the rulers 
of the darkness of this world in high places. The 
very audacity and arrogance of this financial piracy 
has, however, brought about a dramatic and un- 
precedented reaction. When a community has 
once discovered that Directors are misdirecting, 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 133 

that Trustees are untrustworthy, and that the 
very name of Trust is applied to an illegal combina- 
tion, it is likely to be not only morally shocked, but 
stirred to a new demand for reform. Outraged 
sentiment in the United States has, therefore, not 
only uttered itself in stringent legislation, but has 
led to indictments, confessions, judicial sentences, 
and even suicides, which mark the stormy begin- 
nings of a new age. Never before in financial history 
was there such a searching of hearts and scrutiny of 
methods as have been of late going on in the busi- 
ness world. Habits of trade which a generation 
ago were not only entrenched as customs, but 
defended as creditable, have become either frankly 
discarded or guiltily concealed. Not great cor- 
porations alone, but men of every degree who are 
concerned with the making of money, are consulting 
their consciences as much as their ledgers, and ad- 
justing their affairs to meet the new tests of public 
opinion and the new interpretation of law. 

At such a time one quality in human life attains 
new importance and gives to its possessors distinction 
and leadership. It is what a journal little given to 
sentiment, the New York Nation, has lately de- 
scribed as the " antique virtue of simple honesty." 3 
The age of Napoleons of finance, of wreckers of 
corporations, of dummy directors and reckless 
plunderers, is closing as the prison doors have closed 
on some illustrious representatives of that era; 
1 The Nation , Jan. 1, 19 14. 



134 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and the best foundations of business success in the 
new time are integrity, incorruptibility, the spirit 
of stewardship, and the humanization of industry. 
Difficult, then, as it still must be to keep business 
clean, hard as it still is for a rich man to enter 
the Kingdom of God, it is evident that the modern 
world has discovered, through many severe and 
even tragic experiences, the practicability — not 
to say the desirability — of the Christianization 
of business. Honesty has become not only the 
best policy, but the surest foundation of a stable 
competency. The best advice which can now be 
offered to a young man who wants a good income is 
to get and keep a good name. Even though the 
business world is far from Christianized, it at least 
faces toward the light. It is a period, not of fulfil- 
ment, but of anticipation ; a prophetic rather than 
a Messianic era. A man of the modern business 
world may not be ready to repeat the great words of 
perfect consecration, "My meat is to do the 
will of Him that sent me and to finish his work" ; 
but he may be ready to obey the call of the prophet : 
"Prepare the way ! Take up the stumbling block 
out of the way of my people ! Cast up the high- 
way ! Gather out the stones !" 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 

The considerations which have thus far been sug- 
gested for the direction or control of money-making, 
however important they may be for men involved in 
business affairs, may well seem to others of little 
personal concern. Great numbers of persons, 
though necessarily using money, are not primarily 
devoted to making it, and the call to utilize it 
or humanize it may make but slight appeal to 
their own lives. There are, however, two uses of 
money which are not reserved for financiers or 
capitalists, but are available for all except those 
who have no money to use, and which are quite as 
perplexing in the problems and demands they in- 
volve as is the conduct of business itself. The first 
of these uses is in the spending of money, and 
the second is in the giving it away. Not the 
rich only, but the far more numerous and far 
more important body of less conspicuous people 
who are neither rich nor poor, feels itself con- 
fronted by questions of expenditure and of benev- 
olence, of thrift and charity, of extravagance and 
generosity. How to spend without waste, and 
how to give without harm, are matters of daily 

*35 



136 THE CHRISTIAN LIEE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

self-inquiry and hesitancy for great numbers of 
conscientious lives. What indication, then, of 
guidance among such problems may be derived 
from the teaching of Jesus Christ? What are 
the rules of spending and the principles of giving 
which the Christian life may apply, under the 
circumstances of the modern world? 

The first of these questions is of special concern in 
the United States because its people, whether pros- 
perous or poor, are the most thriftless and extrava- 
gant in the world. The extraordinary bounty of 
nature, the discovery of new resources, the migra- 
tory habit of life, and the universality of popular 
education have combined to make desires outrun 
possessions and luck more tempting than thrift. 
The typical American is expectant, sanguine, and 
venturesome. Though he may fail at one point, he 
anticipates success at another. As one need is 
satisfied it creates more. The romantic story of 
great fortunes attained from small beginnings 
excites the imaginations of plain people as Cooper's 
Indians used to excite American boys to take the 
warpath ; and the magic of speculation seems more 
likely than the slow processes of saving to convert 
earnings into gold. 

The national extravagance induced by this 
habit of mind is most conspicuous among the 
foolish rich, whose ostentatious prodigality makes 
welcome material for the daily press and incites 
the less fortunate either to vulgar imitation or 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 137 

to bitter protest. Hardly less misdirected and 
wasteful, however, though less conspicuous, is the 
extravagance of wage-earners and their families. 
Ill-chosen and expensive food, hand-to-mouth 
buying, migratory living, the passion for finery, 
and the still more imperative craving for alcoholic 
drink, not only dissipate earnings, but reduce the 
capacity to earn. "Give me the luxuries of life," 
a distinguished American once playfully said, "and 
I can dispense with the necessities." This is pre- 
cisely the principle which prevails in many an 
humble home. Imitation of the more fortunate, 
the contagion of fashion, and ignorance of the first 
principles of sanitation and nutrition increase the 
budget of superfluities and rob both bodies and 
minds of necessities, until the will to save and the 
ability to save perish together. The situation is 
aggravated by the counsel of many revolutionists 
who systematically condemn the habit of thrift. 
He who saves, they argue, is likely to be on the 
side of the present industrial order. His balance 
in the savings-bank commits him to capitalism. 
To spend all one gets and to demand more is, it is 
often taught, the first duty of a consistent revolu- 
tionist. "We teach our people," an English labor 
leader once said, "that thrift is no virtue." 

In this condition of national improvidence two 
general truths become of preliminary importance. 
In the first place it should be remembered that thrift 
is not only an economic advantage, but a way of 



138 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

moral education. The saving of money is, in most 
instances, to be encouraged, not merely for the mak- 
ing of money, but quite as much for the making of 
character. Prosperous children not less than poor 
children may be taught, through the practice of 
thrift, not only frugality and prudence, but self- 
restraint, foresight, and consideration for others. 
The reckless spender loses not only money, but self- 
control. However threatening to economic welfare 
the prevalence of thrif tlessness may be, the risk to 
self-mastery and efficiency, which inevitably ac- 
companies thriftlessness, is still more disastrous to 
national morality. The spendthrift tendencies 
of the poor may be in some degree defended as 
signs of aspiration and hope ; but the irresponsible 
ostentation of the rich is an unmistakable sign of 
decadence. The one may meet a civilization on its 
way up ; the other attacks it on its way down. 

The second principle which should be remem- 
bered at this point is what the economists call the 
fallacy of extravagance. It is sometimes argued 
that the spending on superfluities promotes labor 
and trade. A sumptuous ball, for example, in- 
volves and remunerates many kinds of labor. The 
cost of champagne supports the grower in France 
and the distributor in America; the prodigal dis- 
play of flowers maintains florists and decorators. 
What seems a waste is thus, it is urged, a blessing. 
The spendthrift is a disguised philanthropist. 
The argument, however, as has been often pointed 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 139 

out, is fallacious. It assumes that the money 
thus spent would otherwise remain idle and unpro- 
ductive, while, in fact, money, even though left by a 
depositor in a bank, is set by the bank in circulation 
and applied to the making of more money. The 
depositor may be idle, but the money is at work. 
Investment uses money as definitely as does spend- 
ing. The only economic alternatives possible, 
unless money be kept in a miser's stocking, are 
those of a profitable and an unprofitable expendi- 
ture. "It is," as Mr. Mill said, "a truism, though 
a paradox, that a person does good to laborers, not 
by what he consumes on himself, but by what he 
does not consume." * Thus it is the direction in 
which labor is to be employed which is the only 
practical issue involved. What makes expenditure 
on champagne less well directed than investment in 
houses or railroads is not that labor is not in both 
cases promoted, but that the labor in the one case 
creates a perishable product and in the other case 
reproduces further labor. The champagne is 
drunk and the bottles are thrown away ; while the 
houses are occupied and the railroads continue to 
employ labor and to promote convenience and 
trade. In the one case value ceases ; in the other 
case it is perpetuated or increased. The eco- 
nomic fallacy of extravagance consists in direct- 
ing expenditure to that which is short-lived, perish- 

1 "Principles of Political Economy," 1868, 1, p. 120; cf. F. W. 
Taussig, "Principles of Economics," 1911, II, p. 192. 



140 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

ing, and pernicious, instead of to that which is 
reproductive, permanent, or serviceable. Waste- 
fulness, ostentation, and self-indulgence not only 
diminish economic productiveness in the spender, 
but obstruct the flow of productive labor to other 
lives. 

These general considerations bring one to the 
personal problems of his own expenditure, or to 
what an American economist has called "the 
backward art of spending money." x What princi- 
ple may direct one in his spending ? What stand- 
ard of living is justified and appropriate? What 
are the limits of luxury ? Is it possible to adminis- 
ter expenditure without penuriousness on the one 
hand or extravagance on the other, so that the 
Christian life may be consistent with the conditions 
of the modern world? The answers to these 
questions must, of course, vary in many details 
with varying circumstances of inheritance, occupa- 
tion, or place. Fixed regulations cannot be appli- 
cable to different incomes or special emergencies. 
The Christian Gospel is not a Talmudic system of 
minute rules concerning each detail of conduct, but 
a communication of Power and Life, with the 
elasticity and variability of this dynamic and 
vital operation. And yet the general principle of 
stewardship which governs the making of money 
may direct not less definitely the spending of it. 
If what one owns is owed, if possessions are 

1 W. C. Mitchell, American Economic Review, June, 191 2. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 141 

illusory until they are socially serviceable, if 
riches have in them the quality of " deceitf ulness " 
against which one must be on his guard, then 
some indication is given to any thoughtful mind 
concerning the backward art of spending money. 

In the first place the principle of stewardship 
indicates scrutiny. Expenditure must be intelli- 
gent and rational instead of thoughtless and stupid. 
"The Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a 
reckoning with them." To be ready for that 
accounting, to accept the limitations and obliga- 
tions of a trustee, to fix a standard of living which is 
appropriate and legitimate for one who is respon- 
sible to Him who owns, and to recognize as 
fraudulent either the practice or the pretence of 
prodigality, — that is the beginning of Christian 
spending. The loose expenditure which is often 
fancied to be a sign of social superiority or superb 
indifference is, in fact, not only a form of vulgarity, 
but a form of self-deception. It hopes to buy 
recognition, distinction, or gratitude; but it be- 
comes, in reality, notorious, ridiculed, or plundered. 

Here is an ethical situation which is often quite 
overlooked. Many a man who closely scrutinizes 
his money-making feels no obligation to scrutinize 
his spending. May I not, he says, do as I will with 
mine own ? The science of business is so absorbing 
that he has no time for the science of expenditure. 
Many a woman has no idea what, or on what, she 
spends, and swings in her moods from extravagance 



142 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

to penuriousness, injuring other lives, first by her 
recklessness and then by her injustice. The 
scrutiny of spending is as much a duty of women 
as of men, of employers as of employees, of house- 
keepers as of house-servants, of the prosperous as 
of the poor. "They that trust in their wealth 
and boast themselves in the multitude of their 
riches," says the Psalmist, "none of them can by 
any means redeem his brother nor give to God a 
ransom for him." Ostentatious and reckless spend- 
ing, that is to say, is not only culpable in itself, but 
may even leave one incapable of helping others. 
One cannot redeem his brother by purchase, or 
buy a ransom for him. The only way to redeem 
another life is through one's own life. The Son of 
Man came to give his life a ransom for many. 

To the obligation of scrutiny is, however, to be 
immediately added what may be called the privilege 
of detachment. The scrutiny of spending, though 
a duty to be intelligently performed, is a subordi- 
nate duty. If it become primary and engrossing, it 
grows anxious and penurious. The Christian life 
is faithful in that which is least, not because the 
least is much, but because the least may, if over- 
looked, be obstructive of that which is much. 
It makes a friend of Mammon, not because Mam- 
mon offers a permanent habitation, but because 
Mammon may obstruct the way toward "ever- 
lasting habitations." In short, the problem of 
spending, while it may be carelessly ignored, may 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 143 

on the other hand be taken too seriously. The 
Christian life views it with a certain detachment of 
mind. Precisely as the economists, in dealing with 
the fallacy of extravagance, advise the direction of 
expenditure to permanent rather than to perish- 
able ends, so with reiterated emphasis Jesus calls 
his disciples to give their loyalty, not to that which 
is to perish, but to that which is to remain. "Seek 
first," he says, "the Kingdom of God and His 
righteousness" ; "Provide for yourselves treasures 
that fade not" ; "Where your treasure is there will 
your heart be also" ; "Thou fool . . . that layeth 
up treasure for himself and is not rich toward 
God." 

The emancipation of the will from slavery to 
riches and its dedication to treasures which money 
cannot buy is, therefore, the first condition of spir- 
itual security. The spirit of detachment supple- 
ments the scrutiny of spending. It is important 
to save, but there are other things which are more 
important. The real wealth is that which fades 
not ; the real poverty is that which is not rich tow- 
ard God. Expenditure, therefore, for friendship, 
for hospitality, for the expression of beauty, for 
the dissemination of happiness, for the utterance of 
affection, may often be justified, even when lav- 
ish or imprudent instead of cautious and cal- 
culating. "Piety," said William Law in his 
" Serious Call," " requires to renounce no way of life 
where we can act reasonably. Whatever you can 



144 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

do or enjoy in the presence of God, as his rational 
creature ... is allowed by the laws of piety." * 

This is what the Apostle, in a phrase often robbed 
of its force, called the " Simplicity that is toward 
Christ." 2 Simplicity is not meagreness or empti- 
ness, the stripping from life of its richness and 
resources ; it is, as the Greek signifies, singleness, 
the undeviating direction of the will as of a piece 
of wood which is straight-grained. The simple 
life is one that has fixed direction, straightforward- 
ness, single-mindedness, the ability to keep a 
straight path among the solicitations either of 
selfishness or of success. There is a simplicity 
which abandons and rejects ; and there is a better 
simplicity which discriminates and selects; and 
this capacity to keep the narrow path which divides 
niggardliness from extravagance and ostentation 
from liberality, is one evidence of the simplicity 
that is toward Christ. 

No glimpse of the heart of Jesus is more illu- 
minating than that which is here revealed. The 
same Teacher who so repeatedly condemns fool- 
ish expenditure, and bids his disciples provide 
for themselves treasures that fade not, does not 
hesitate to commend an offering which symbol- 
izes single-minded consecration. A woman brings 
her box of precious ointment, and pours it out 
in prodigal expenditure; and the disciples "have 

1 "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," ed. 1821, p. 108. 

2 2 Cor. XI, 3. " Single-heartedness.' ' (Weymouth, op. cit.) 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 1 45 

indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste ; 
for this ointment might have been sold for much 
and given to the poor?" But Jesus welcomes the 
spontaneous spending, the symbolism of sacrifice, 
the subordination of the commercial to the ideal, 
and says, in words which indorse many an extrava- 
gance of love, " Wheresoever this Gospel shall be 
preached in the whole world, there shall also this 
that this woman hath done be told for a memorial 
of her." The Christian life, in other words, though 
it scrutinizes its spending, is not ascetic, but appre- 
ciative. It says, indeed, with the Prophet, 
"Wherefore do ye spend money for that which 
is not bread?" but it also says with the Apostle, 
"I will very gladly spend and be spent for you." 
John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, 
but the Son of Man was called the friend of wine- 
bibbers and publicans. The first incident reported 
in the Fourth Gospel of the public life of Jesus was 
at a wedding. Jesus, in fact, was as little afraid 
of luxury as he was ashamed of poverty. He 
was equally at home among the prosperous and the 
poor. His teaching was not, " Beware of capital," 
but, " Beware of covetousness." His scrutiny was 
not of money, but of motives. His detachment 
from money was not from the institution of prop- 
erty, but from the deceitfulness of riches. 

What, then, is the test which may with varying 
results under varying circumstances be applied 
to the personal problem of expenditure ? It is the 



146 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

test of service. Am I spending for self-display, for 
notoriety, for sensual satisfaction, ignorantly, 
stupidly, with varying whims of extravagance and 
niggardliness alternating like fever and chills? 
Then, even while I ignore the social obligations of 
my spending, the satisfactions of that spending 
tend to shrink into discontent, restlessness, and 
burdensome care; and even as I say to myself, 
" Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; 
take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry," I hear the 
stinging satire of God, "Thou fool, this night thy 
soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall 
those things be which thou hast provided ?" Or am 
I, on the other hand, accepting the privilege of 
spending as I do the other endowments of my life, as 
talents committed to my care, for which a reckoning 
is to follow, so that money, like health, like learning, 
like skill, is a trust rather than a possession ? Then 
the details of my expenditure fall into their places 
with the duties of the body or the mind or the hand. 
My responsibility is proportionate to my capacity. 
"Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall 
be much required, and to whom men have com- 
mitted much, of him they will ask the more." 
Such is the teaching of Jesus for those to whom 
much has been committed, whether of strength, 
or learning, or money. "The limit of luxury/' 
Canon Barnett once finely said, "is the limit of 
sharing." To dispossess one's self of the fallacy of 
possession, to associate one's expenditure of money 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 147 

with the general problem of the consecration of 
life, — that is no easy task among the multitudi- 
nous demands of ambition, taste, pride, or affec- 
tion; but on no easier terms is the existing 
diversity of social conditions, or even the institu- 
tion of private property itself, likely to endure. If 
wealth means vulgar ostentation and demoralizing 
expenditure, if luxury is license and money a 
menace, then a social structure which has become 
so top-heavy may without much harm to the future 
of the human race topple into ruins. If, on the 
other hand, ownership is stewardship, and spending 
is serving, and luxury is sharing, then social revolu- 
tion may be supplanted by the evolution of a stable 
society. Either self-justification through service, 
or defeat and surrender, are the alternatives 
offered to the spenders of money. The Christian 
life, in a word, holds in its hands the destinies of 
the economic world. 

When one turns from these problems of expendi- 
ture to the second use of money, through personal 
benevolence or through organizations for social 
service, he is met by difficulties which are familiar 
to great numbers of thoughtful lives. What are 
the laws and limits of judicious charity? What 
proportion of one's earnings or savings should be 
distributed to those who earn little and save noth- 
ing ? How may one be sure that in trying to do 
good he is not doing harm ? If he subsidize, will he 
not pauperize? Is not "the one big duty," as an 



148 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

American economist has affirmed, to mind one's 
own business and take care of one's self ? In the 
" Dialogue" of Seneca, already cited, the Stoic 
philosopher anticipates in a most surprising degree 
the modern attitude of caution in approaching the 
duty of charity. "If any one thinks that giving," 
he says, "is an easy matter, he is mistaken. It 
presents the greatest difficulty, provided one gives 
deliberately and does not scatter casually and on 
impulse. . . . He will have an easy purse but not 
one with holes ; one from which much may go out, 
but nothing fall out. ... To some I will not 
give, although they lack, for even if I were to give 
they would still lack. ... I cannot be careless in 
this matter. Never do I keep my accounts more 
carefully than when I give." What light may be 
thrown by the teaching of Jesus on this duty of 
intelligent and discriminating benevolence? If 
some guidance has been found among the problems 
of making money and spending it, can it also be 
trusted to direct one among the not less difficult 
problems of giving money away? 

The answer to these questions may be ap- 
proached by recalling one characteristic of the Gos- 
pels which is often overlooked. Jesus accepts in 
his teaching, it is true, the noble tradition of his 
nation that charity is the logical sequence of reli- 
gion. "I was a father to the poor," said Job in his 
parable. "He hath given to the poor," says the 
Psalmist. "He that giveth unto the poor shall not 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 1 49 

lack/' says the Book of Proverbs. In the same 
spirit of merciful responsibility the Gospels teach : 
" Distribute to the poor; Sell that ye have and 
give to the poor"; and Paul writes to Timothy, 
"Be ready to distribute." It soon appears, how- 
ever, that the teaching of Jesus modifies profoundly 
this tradition of benevolence. Almsgiving, though 
it be an essential part of the Christian life, is to him 
not its complete, or even its highest, expression. 
On the contrary, it is an undertaking beset by 
many risks and easily blighted by ostentation, 
self-interest, and hypocrisy. The new Teacher is, 
therefore, more concerned with the mistakes of 
charity than with its merits. "Take heed," he 
says, "that ye do not your alms before men." 
"When thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand 
know what thy right hand doeth." "Many that 
were rich cast in much, and there came a certain 
widow and she threw in two mites, which make a 
farthing. And he called unto him his disciples and 
saith unto them ; Verily, I say unto you that this 
poor widow has cast more in than all they which 
have cast into the treasury." Self-display and 
self-satisfaction rob giving of its worth ; self-efface- 
ment and sacrifice are the marks of Christian 
charity. "He that giveth," writes Paul to the same 
effect, "let him do it with simplicity;" "Not 
grudgingly or of necessity : for God loveth a cheer- 
ful giver." 
This attitude of caution and reserve is in curious 



150 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

contrast with the prevailing practice of the Chris- 
tian Church. Almsgiving in the name of Christ 
has been not only vast in its dimensions, but, as a 
rule, indiscriminate in its methods. The command, 
"Give to him that asketh thee/' has often seemed 
to justify recklessness in the giver and mendicancy 
in the receiver. Many a man who is hard in business 
but soft in sentiment has defended his double stand- 
ard of ethics by citing the Apostolic precept: 
"Charity shall cover the multitude of sins." The 
relief of the poor has even been commended, not 
so much for its effect on the receiver's welfare as 
for its effect on the giver's peace of mind. "I give 
alms," said Sir Thomas Browne, "not to satisfy the 
hunger of my brother, but to fulfil the will and 
commandment of my God." * 

This perversion of charity into a form of self- 
justification or self-esteem finds no support in the 
teaching of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, he de- 
mands a rigid self-inquiry into the motives of giv- 
ing. Am I charitable because I am too busy or 
too indolent to refuse ? Is it with me as with the 
giver whom Jesus with such irony condemned, who 
would not give because he was a friend, but be- 
cause of his friend's importunity would rise and 
give him ? Am I tarnished with what Mr. Spencer 
called the flunkeyism of benevolence, 2 which is glad 

1 "Religio Medici," II, 2 ; cited by Lecky, "History of Euro- 
pean Morals," 1869, p. 299. 

2 "Principles of Ethics," 1893, II, p. 284. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 1 51 

to pay for social prominence and for a high place 
in the lists of givers ? Then I may sit in the chief 
seats of the philanthropists and receive their greet- 
ings in the market-place, but I do not escape the 
burning judgment of Jesus Christ, "Woe unto you 
hypocrites, for all your works ye do for to be seen 
of men ; . . . therefore ye shall receive the greater 
damnation.' ' 

Thus, the problem of distributing money cannot 
be separated from the antecedent problem of ad- 
ministering money. The steward in the teaching of 
Jesus does not justify himself by giving away his 
Master's money lavishly, but by administering it 
wisely. The most charitable man of business is 
the man who conducts his business humanely. 
The stream of wealth is purified, not by filtering it 
at its outlet, but by cleansing it at its source. The 
faithful steward, the diligent servant, the watchful 
porter, are givers not less than those "who dis- 
tribute unto the poor." The first bring gifts of 
fidelity, diligence, and loyalty; while the second 
may offer unto the Lord that which has cost them 
nothing. The same qualification must be made 
concerning benevolence by bequest. It may be an 
honorable duty to insure the continuance of one's 
benefactions after death; but such distributions, 
though they may be serviceable to charity, cannot 
be regarded as adequate substitutes for generosity 
and self-sacrifice while one is alive. There may be 
but little virtue in giving away what one cannot 



152 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

keep. Indeed, it may be, in effect, a giving by one's 
heirs rather than by one's self. " Defer not charities 
till death/' said Bacon, "for certainly, if a man 
weigh it rightly, he that hath done so is rather 
liberal of another man's than of his own." * 

Approaching, then, the problem of giving with 
this appreciation of its subordinate place and 
peculiar difficulty, one is soon met by further and 
more positive directions. In the first place, the 
teaching of Jesus prescribes that giving should be, 
so far as practicable, individualized and personal 
rather than mechanical and institutional. His 
way of helping was, as the author of "Ecce Homo" 
said, "by contagiop from another living soul." 
The one lost sheep, the one lost coin, the one lost 
son, was his search. His sympathy was "a love 
for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individ- 
ual." 2 "That unit of value," Phillips Brooks 
said in one of his noblest paragraphs, "was never 
out of the soul of Jesus. After the day when he 
told them the story which they could never forget, 
of how there was a man with a hundred sheep . . . 
and of how the shepherd left all the rest and found 
the one that was lost, and came singing down the 
hill with the rescued sheep upon his shoulder, — 
after that keynote of the individual had been struck, 
it never ceased to be heard through everything 

1 Essays, XXXIV. 

2 "Ecce Homo," Ch. XIV, "The Enthusiasm of Humanity;" 
Ch. XVIII, "The Law of Edification." 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 153 

that Jesus said and did." * Giving, therefore, is a 
meagre substitute for Christian charity if it be not 
the giving of one's self, one's time, thought, and com- 
passion, as person to person, as life to life. The 
master-words of the Gospels thus become the key 
of effective philanthropy. It is the transmission of 
Power ; it is the contagion of Life. 

Here is a guide-post set where many roads of giv- 
ing divide. That way of giving is best to follow 
which is most personal or educative, and least offi- 
cial or external. Most imperative and most re- 
warding are the immediate ministries of neighborly 
responsibility, the friendly hand and the reenf orcing 
will, where the transmission of power and life is least 
obstructed. The lame man lay at the gate of the 
Temple "to ask alms of them that entered," but 
Peter said to him : "Silver and gold have I none, 
but such as I have give I thee. In the name of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." That 
is a perfect expression of Christian charity. To 
contribute power is better than to contribute alms. 
To give life is better than to give subscriptions. 
To give one's life as a ransom is more costly than 
to give a ransom for being left alone. The gifts of 
Life and Power are equally blessed to give and to 
receive. 

This principle is less easily applied in cases of 
institutional or organized relief, where giving must 
be in some degree delegated, and money becomes a 
1 "The Influence of Jesus," 1879, p. 112. 



154 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

substitute for personal service. Yet here also the 
test is conclusive. That organization or method is 
best which is most humanized. The placing-out 
system, for example, for children, for the insane, 
for the feeble-minded, is a scientific recognition of 
the Christian ideal. It displaces institutionalism 
by humanity ; it offers not asylums, but homes ; 
it provides not keepers, but parents. It is the same 
with the most unimpeachable forms of charity. 
To communicate courage, to fortify character, to 
revive hope, to bring a person to a person, the 
friendly visitor to the poor, the nurse to the sick, 
the teacher to the ignorant, the strong to the weak, 
is the investment in giving which the disciple of 
Jesus Christ should seek. Jesus did not, so far as 
the record reports, give alms; he gave himself. 
The call of God was to give Power and Life. " He 
hath anointed me ... to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and, recovering 
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised/' The Samaritan gave little money, but 
much time and care ; and it was his intelligent and 
continuous compassion more than his pence which 
made him a neighbor. 

"Who giveth himself with his gift feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." 

From the principle of individualization in giving 
there follows the principle of education for the giver. 
If a person is to serve a person, if a life is to com- 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 1 55 

municate power, then it must be educated to under- 
stand and fulfil this difficult task. The science 
of relief must guide the sentiment of compassion. 
Education in giving is essential for the prevention 
both of economic and of moral waste. An English 
writer has lately said that economic progress may- 
be measured by the application of mind to industry. 
It is not less true that philanthropic progress is to 
be measured by the application of mind to giving. 
To this point, however, Christian sentiment has 
come with great reluctance. Intelligence and dis- 
cretion applied to giving have often seemed to rob 
it of spontaneity and grace. How can one, it is 
asked, obey the command, "Give to him that 
asketh thee," and at the same time restrain him- 
self from indiscriminate and emotional benevo- 
lence ? Nowhere, therefore, has it been harder for 
the science of charity to take root than in the soil 
of the Christian Church. The instincts of piety 
have, as a rule, seemed more trustworthy guides 
than : — 

"Organized charity, scrimped and iced, 
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ." 

Uneducated giving, however, when more closely 
scrutinized, turns out as a rule to be little more than 
disguised selfishness. The sight of suffering pains ; 
the story of want distresses; the contrast of cir- 
cumstances shocks; and one cannot rest until he 
gives. Very different from this intermittent dis- 



156 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

composure is the " Caritas " of Christianity. Being 
concerned with personality quite as much as with 
poverty, its giving must be intelligent and educa- 
tive. Charity, the Apostle says, "buildeth up." 
It may give to every one that asketh, but it gives, 
not the help which may pauperize, but the help 
which may " edify." " Though I bestow all my 
goods to feed the poor, and have not charity, it 
profile th me nothing." Charity is but another name 
for rational, effective, and enduring love. In this 
education of the giver there is, therefore, no conflict 
of science with sentiment. On the contrary, as 
the aim of machinery is to transmit power, so the 
science of philanthropy is designed to transmit 
sentiment. Science which is mere officialism is as 
ineffective as sentiment which is mere emotional- 
ism. It is easy to be recklessly kind ; it is equally 
easy to be timidly wise; but to be scientifically 
sympathetic and intelligently humane, — that is 
the difficult task of Christian giving. 

It may be urged that rational giving is likely to 
be less generous than emotional giving ; that to sit 
down with one's conscience at the beginning of 
the year and apportion one's giving according to 
one's means, is to repress the bounty of the heart. 
This conclusion, however, is contradicted by the 
experience of those communities where this ap- 
plication of science to giving has been made. 
Emotional giving is, as a rule, highly deceptive. 
One thinks he has given much and excuses 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 157 

himself for giving more, when, in fact, he has 
made the same excuse already. He obeys the 
injunction that his left hand shall not know 
what his right hand has done; but he forgets 
that his right hand has remained in his pocket. 
A home where children are educated to give as 
well as to receive, and where parents approach the 
problem of giving money with the same conscien- 
tious scrutiny which they apply to investing money, 
does not find its instincts of compassion drying up, 
but on the contrary is deepening the channel for their 
fertilizing flow. There is no more risk to giving 
from science than from sentimentalism, from hard- 
heartedness than from soft-headedness. As has 
been seen in the case of the family, one should love 
not only with the heart and soul but with the mind. 
To apply the mind to love, to rationalize sym- 
pathy and make compassion wise, is to accept the 
education which the teaching of Jesus requires. 

These principles of individualization in giving 
and of education to give are finally summed up in 
what may be called the spiritualization of giving. 
What often blights the giving of money, like the 
making and spending of it, is the practical mate- 
rialism which dominates so much of modern life. 
If one only has enough money, and does not spend 
too much, and gives away a little, he may easily 
seem to himself to have fulfilled the whole duty of 
man and to be ready for the judgment of God. 
Much good may, unquestionably, be done with 



158 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

money, and it is better to do good with money 
than not to do good at all. The giving of money 
may even be, in certain instances, the best avail- 
able symbol of self-denial and love. What seems 
to be less obvious, however, is the fact that there 
is much which money cannot do, either for the rich 
or the poor; that there are desires and demands 
which cannot be bought or sold ; that behind the 
external and material experiences of life there are 
profounder needs which can be satisfied only by 
the spiritualization of giving. 

One of the most surprising experiences which 
meets many well-intentioned givers is the sense of 
their insufficiency and helplessness. Their alms 
seem wasted ; their advice is repelled ; they cannot 
bridge the chasm which lies between their kindly 
giving and its unresponsive recipients. What is the 
meaning of this curious impotency ? It means that 
a spiritual relation has been mistaken for a ma- 
terial relation, that the needs to be supplied have 
seemed to be money, food, and clothing, when they 
were, even more primarily, courage, self-control, 
and hope. Material needs may be easy to supply, 
but spiritual giving is possible for those only who 
have these blessings themselves. Charity, that is 
to say, is inseparable from character. To give, one 
must have. There is much good which one can- 
not do without being good himself. "Bear ye one 
another's burdens," wrote the apostle Paul, but 
almost in the same sentence he added, "For 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 1 59 

every man shall bear his own burden." To help 
another in the deeper experiences of his life, one 
must have been helped himself. Inexperience of 
hardness leaves the kindest philanthropist impotent 
before the mystery of lives that are hard. Only 
the bearer of his own burdens is strong enough to 
lay on his shoulder the added burden of other lives. 
Among the deep sayings of Jesus Christ none is 
more searching than that which defines the nature 
of his own consecration. "For their sakes," he 
says, "I sanctify myself." "For their sakes," — 
that was the end of his mission, — the giving of 
life a ransom for many ; but the beginning of that 
service of others was in the sanctifying of himself. 
Having found the strength of communion with 
God, he could apply that strength to the helping 
of man. That is his gospel of giving. "If any 
man will come after me," he says, "let him deny 
himself and take up his cross and follow me." Effi- 
ciency comes of experience. Self-denial equips for 
service. It is only the bearers of their own crosses 
who can be the saviours of other souls. 

How far-reaching, then, become these principles 
of the uses of money ! Whether one make it, or 
spend it, or give it away, he is, in fact, dealing with 
a material symbol of the spiritual life. His scrutiny 
and his detachment in spending, the individualiza- 
tion and education of his giving, are tests of his 
own character. The problems of expenditure 
and of philanthropy are not separable from the 



l6o THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

problems of bearing one's own burdens and car- 
rying one's own cross. Are such uses of money 
inconsistent with the conditions of the modern 
world? On the contrary, the more closely they 
are examined, the more obvious it becomes that 
they are principles which stand like supporting 
arches under the whole structure of modern 
life. The humanization of industry is the last 
word of financial sagacity and economic fore- 
sight; the scrutinizing of spending is the only 
barrier which stands between Western civilization 
and the flood of gross materialism which swept 
away the splendor of ancient Rome ; and the in- 
dividualizing and spiritualizing of giving are the 
only terms on which charity may cease to be an 
offence and insult, and remain consistent with fra- 
ternalism and self-respect. It is no easy task in 
days like these to use money well. It is hard for 
a rich man, either as spender or as giver, to enter 
the Kingdom of God. Yet social evolution has, 
at least, reached that dramatic point where the 
mechanism of modern life is waiting for the influx 
of Christian power, and where the hope of social 
stability and peace depends on the practicability 
of the Christian life in the modern world. 



VI 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 

One of the most curious characteristics of the 
modern world is the limited range in which the 
social conscience appears to operate. If, as has 
been suggested, the area of social relationships is 
pictured as a series of concentric circles surrounding 
the individual life, then it becomes evident that 
the sense of duty slackens as the radius of respon- 
sibility is prolonged. Within the interior circle 
of the Family, for example, in spite of many trage- 
dies of instability and disruption, there remains 
a prevailing tradition of self-forgetfulness and 
sacrifice which keeps the normal home uninfected 
by the poison of inconstant love. As one enters 
the larger area of the industrial world, he is met by 
many signs of the times which encourage the belief 
that, in spite of the strategies and brutalities of 
trade, the moralization of business is not impossible. 
When, however, he passes to the more comprehen- 
sive circle of social relations, where both families 
and industries are associated in a political Com- 
monwealth, and considers the motives which control 
either local or national politics, he may easily be 

M 161 



1 62 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

led to conclude that moral idealism has spent its 
force before radiating so far, and that political life 
is little else than a scene of intrigue, plundering, 
and treachery. 

What, for example, could be more disheart- 
ening to one who looks for the purification of 
politics than the prevailing condition of city-gov- 
ernment in the United States, with its scramble 
of party politicians for the spoils of office, and 
its cynical contempt for both economy and effi- 
ciency, — a situation which has provoked one of 
the most distinguished of Americans to remark: 
"I would desire for my country three things above 
all others to supplement our existing American 
civilization : from Great Britain her administration 
of criminal justice, from Germany her theatre, and 
from any European country, save Russia, Spain 
and Turkey, its government of cities." * Or what, 
again, can be said of the principles and practices 
of national politics which appear to be approved 
by the most favored couMries of the modern 
world ? Is legislation habitually guided by a com- 
prehensive and far-sighted idealism, or is it, in 
the main, a balancing of temporary expediencies, 
a promotion of party interests, not to speak of its 
baser uses to promote personal ambition or gain ? 
Is not an English observer justified in remarking 
that while patriotic sentiment is conspicuous in 
the United States, the " sense of public spirit . . . 
1 Andrew D. White, " Autobiography," 1905, II, p. 226. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 63 

seems to be little developed/' * or, in other words, 
that Americans are more inclined to boast of their 
country than to make sacrifices for her? " Politi- 
cal life/' Professor Cunningham concludes, " ap- 
pears to be regarded in America as the mere weigh- 
ing of larger and smaller interests against each 
other. . . . The conception of government as 
trusteeship for the community ... is curiously 
lacking." 

If one goes still further and considers the pre- 
vailing characteristics of international diplomacy, 
must not the indictment be even more severe? 
What could be more brutally cynical than the 
plots of statesmen to occupy a territory or to ruin 
an ally, as though the world were a chess-board 
and the nations pawns in a great game? What 
essential difference is there between the negotia- 
tions of diplomatists to despoil a neighboring king- 
dom and the plans of burglars to rob a bank? 
When Crispi protested to Bismarck that in the 
taking over by Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
Italy " would find herself clasped as in a vice," 
the master of statecraft calmly replied, as though 
the Balkan States were a subject for scientific 
vivisection: "If Austria takes Bosnia, Italy can 
take Albania, or some other Turkish province on 
the Adriatic." 2 Or when, again, Italy found the 

1 W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," 1910, 

p. 54. 

2 "Memoirs of Francesco Crispi," 191 2, II, p. 33. 



164 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

north of Africa becoming French, no further prov- 
ocation seemed necessary to justify an outrageous 
raid on Tripoli. Or when, again, a Christian re- 
volt against Turkish oppression united the Balkan 
Peninsula in a holy war, the cynical neutrality of 
the Great Powers combined with the forces of 
national jealousy and greed to convert that cru- 
sade into a colossal tragedy. And what shall be 
said of the Christian nations of Northern Europe, 
as they multiply their armaments in the name of 
peace, or watch the regeneration of China like dis- 
appointed heirs who have prematurely divided the 
sick man's estate? " Without justice," said St. 
Augustine, as if contemplating these modern inci- 
dents, " what are kingdoms but high-way robberies 
on a grand scale ? . . . Indeed, that was an apt and 
true reply which was given to Alexander the Great 
by a pirate whom he had seized. For when that 
king had asked the man how he durst so molest 
the sea, he answered with bold pride : ' How 
darest thou molest the whole world ? But because 
I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, whilst 
thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled Em- 
peror.' " * Is not Milton's description of politics 
in the Seventeenth Century applicable to a later 
age, "How to keep the floating carcass of a crazy 
or diseased monarchy or State betwixt wind and 
water, swimming still upon her own dead lees, — 

1 "City of God," Bk. IV, Ch. 4. (Quid sunt regna, nisi magna 
latrocinia?) j 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 165 

that now is the deep design of a politician." 1 
Is not statecraft so cunning an art that, as Lord 
Beaconsfield once satirically said, "It is doubtful 
whether good men should be intrusted with the con- 
duct of public affairs. " 2 Was not Lord John Russell 
justified in writing to Lord Cowley, in 1859, con- 
cerning the annexation of the Duchies to Piedmont : 
"I could not answer ... in a despatch, for I 
should use terms of abhorrence and indignation 
too strong for eyes and ears diplomatic. The 
disposal of Tuscany and Modena as if they were 
so many firkins of butter is somewhat too prof- 
ligate." 3 "I hate a lie," said Bismarck to Crispi, 
with perhaps not absolute accuracy, "but I confess 
that in certain rare instances in my political life 
I have had to resort to it" ; 4 and with a finer dip- 
lomatic instinct Cavour remarked : "I understand 
the art of misleading diplomats. I tell them the 
truth, and am certain that they will not believe 
me." "As to the title of statesman," said John 
Bright in 1868, 5 "I have seen so much intrigue 
and ambition, so much selfishness and inconsistency 
in the character of so-called statesmen, that I have 
always been anxious to disclaim the title. I have 
been content to describe myself as a simple citizen." 

ia Of Reformation touching Church Discipline," etc.; 
"Works" (Pickering), 1851, III, p. 34. 
2 Spectator, Nov. 8, 1913. 
8 Thayer, "Life and Times of Cavour," 191 1, II, p. 129. 

4 "Crispi bei Bismarck," 1894, s. 133. 

5 G. M. Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," 1913, p. 386. 



l66 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Must one, then, confess that these testimonies 
completely represent the political life of the modern 
world? Must the moral ideals which Christian 
faith has nurtured be regarded as wholly inappli- 
cable to statesmanship or legislation? Has the 
circle of political action so extended a radius that 
the sense of responsibility fails to reach its circum- 
ference? If this conclusion were inevitable, it 
would involve the further confession that modern 
civilization itself is a scene of moral decline, where 
each extension of national and international re- 
lations carries the world farther from moral sanc- 
tions and laws. Spiritual security, under such 
conditions, must be sought, not by political read- 
justments, but — as Tolstoi taught — by retreat 
from all forms of governmental restraint. Diplo- 
macy would be a name for determination backed 
by force, as in the famous saying of a distinguished 
American concerning the Panama Canal, "As 
nobody else was able to deal with the matter, 
I dealt with it myself," — a way of procedure 
concerning which a competent critic remarks: 
"No British sovereign, or French President, or 
Turkish Sultan, hardly any Russian Tsar, could 
act in a manner so arbitrary. . . . The scope 
of the powers of the Head of the United States 
is . . . positively Montenegrin." x 

When, however, one reconsiders the history of 
political philosophy, he is led to recall a long series of 
1 W. M. Fullerton, "Problems of Power," 1913, p. 35. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 67 

teachers who have seen in forms of government some- 
thing very different from an opportunity for aggran- 
dizement or aggression. The State, to their imagi- 
nations; has appeared to be, not a compact of con- 
venience, maintained by the ambition of rulers or 
the interests of trade, but a spiritual creation, an 
incarnation of social morality, an instrument of 
ethical idealism. Unrealizable and Utopian such 
teachings in many details may have been, but 
succeeding generations have inherited from them 
an indestructible faith in the possible moralization 
of politics. 

The Republic of Plato, for example, in which 
philosophers were to be kings, and kings "to 
have the spirit and power of philosophy," was, 
in one aspect, what Jowett called "a vacant form 
of light on which Plato is seeking to fix the eye of 
mankind" ; x yet the teacher was evidently serious 
in maintaining that " until political greatness and 
wisdom meet in one, . . . cities will never cease 
from ill." "The legislator," he later prescribed, 
"did not aim at making any one class in the State 
happy above the rest ; the happiness was to be in 
the whole State, and he held the citizens together 
by persuasion and necessity, making them bene- 
factors of the State and therefore benefactors of 
each other. . . . They were to be his instruments 
in binding up the State." 2 In other words, the 

1 "Dialogues of Plato," 1871, II, p. 163. 

2 "Republic," 473; 519-520. 



1 68 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Republic was both a visionary ideal, and a practi- 
cable type of political stability and peace. "Most 
men," Plato's editor concludes, "live in a corner 
and see but a little way beyond their own 
home. . . . But in Plato, as from some ' tower of 
speculation/ we look into the distance and behold 
the future of the world." 

When one turns from Plato to Aristotle, he meets 
a conception of the State which is less visionary, but 
not less exalted. "Man is a political animal." 
"In the order of nature the State is prior to the 
family or the individual, for the whole must neces- 
sarily be prior to the parts. Hence it is evident 
that a State is one of the works of nature . . . 
and that whoever is naturally, and not accidentally, 
unfit for Society is either inferior or superior to 
man." The State "contains in itself, if I may so 
speak, the perfection of independence." * 

These lofty sayings of the Greeks are repeated in 
various keys by a succession of prophets and seers 
through later political history, and have revived in 
many a discouraged observer of contemporary 
events his faith in political idealism. "That 
man," taught Dante, "who is imbued with public 
teachings, but cares not to contribute something 
to the public good, is far in arrears of his duty, let 
him be assured ; he is, indeed, not ' a tree planted 

1 "Politics," tr. Walford, 1853, Bk. I, Ch. II. (atrdpiceLa = 
Self-sufficiency; cf. Barbour, "A Philosophic Study of Christian 
Ethics," 191 1, p. 118.) 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 69 

by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit 
in his season/ but rather a destructive whirlpool, 
always engulfing and never giving back what it has 
devoured." 1 "A Commonwealth/' continued Mil- 
ton in the treatise just cited, " ought to be but as 
one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth 
and stature of an honest man, as big and compact 
in virtue as in body." "If there be any one that 
makes many poor to make a few rich," said Crom- 
well, "that suits not a Commonwealth." 2 

Behind all these later teachings, and in large 
part their inspiration, lie the social prophecies of 
the Old Testament and its prevailing note of polit- 
ical idealism. Social stability, it was there almost 
with monotony reiterated, rests on national right- 
eousness. A small nation might be strong if it were 
holy. " What great nation is there that hath a god 
so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is, whenso- 
ever we call upon him ? " " Woe to the oppressing 
city ! Her princes within her are roaring lions ; 
her prophets are light and treacherous persons ! " 
" They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount 
Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth 
forever." These confident proclamations of polit- 
ical ethics have sustained the hope of many a 
defence of honest government and many a revolt 
against oppression. 

None of these doctrines or precepts, however, 

1 "De Monarchia," tr. Henry, 1904, Ch. I. 
2 Morley, "Oliver Cromwell," 1900, p. 339. 



170 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

approaches in sweep of idealism or in imperative- 
ness of command the social prophecy which meets 
one in the teaching of Jesus Christ. His attitude 
toward existing politics was, it is true, determined 
by his citizenship in a conquered province and a 
despised community. His patriotism was Pales- 
tinian. The disasters which threatened his Holy 
City drew from him both warnings and tears. "O 
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I 
have gathered thy children together, even as a 
hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 
ye would not." "And when he was come near, he 
beheld the city, and wept over it." With the 
finest dialectical skill, he refused to be entangled 
in the political seditions of his time. When cer- 
tain of the Pharisees and the Herodians would 
" catch him in his words," he met their demand 
for loyalty to the throne with a counter-demand 
for loyalty to God. You bring to me, he said, this 
penny with Caesar's image as the symbol of im- 
perial authority ; but I bring to you the message 
of my Father and demand of you the obedience of 
faith. As you are pledged to render to Caesar the 
things which are Caesar's, so pledge yourselves also 
to offer to God the things which are God's. "And 
they could not take hold of his words." 

The teaching of Jesus was, then, not a Gospel 
of political revolt. "It must have struck every 
attentive reader of the New Testament," Lord 
Hugh Cecil has lately pointed out, "that its direct 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 171 

teaching in respect to matters of State is slight 
and even meagre." * When, however, this pro- 
vincial teacher, whose primary concern is not for 
legislation but for regeneration, and who refuses 
to be involved in a fruitless conflict with Imperial 
Rome, sets forth his own conception of a Christian 
Commonwealth, he pictures a spiritual Kingdom 
of whose extent even Caesar had never dreamed, 
and before whose power Rome was soon to fall. 
Whether the Kingdom of God, which became the 
burden of his preaching, was to be ethical or 
eschatological in form, to come through some 
catastrophic change or to begin within, or both, 
may remain a debated problem of Biblical inter- 
pretation; but of the general character and sig- 
nificance of his ideal there can be no doubt. It 
was to be a social regeneration. A new world 
was to issue from the new message. To herald 
its coming was the mission of Jesus. The first 
announcement of his purpose records that he "came 
into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the king- 
dom of God." "To organize a society," said the 
author of " Ecce Homo," "and to bind the members 
of it together by the closest ties, was the business 
of his life." 2 This Christian society, however, was 
to be much more comprehensive than imperial 
Rome. A universal Republic, a commonwealth 
of humanity, a spiritualized world, was to grow 

1 " Conservatism," 191 2, p. 75. 
2 "Ecce Homo," 1867, p. 103. 



172 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

like a great tree from the seed sown by Jesus 
Christ. The Kingdom of God was not only a 
gift to be received, but a task to be performed. To 
the realization of this mighty enterprise the dis- 
ciples of Jesus daily pledge themselves as they 
join in their Lord's Prayer. To convert this 
ideal into reality is their supreme desire. The 
Christian religion is either the vainest of mockeries, 
or else it is an inconquerable faith that the King- 
dom of God is more than a dream, and that His will 
may some day be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
The teaching of Jesus has often been compared 
at this point with the political Utopia proposed by 
Plato; and there are many striking analogies 
between the Greek and the Christian ideals. Both 
contemplated a world where the Idea of the Good 
might perfectly prevail. That which to Plato 
was the " Ideal of a perfect State," * was to Jesus 
the Kingdom " prepared from the foundation of 
the world"; and to the writer of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, "the pattern shewed in the mount." 
Plato's teaching of the "nature of justice and the 
perfectly just man," to which we look "in order 
that we might judge of our own happiness and un- 
happiness," is lifted in the Gospels into the great 
sayings : "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His 
righteousness" ; "Be ye therefore perfect, even as 
your Father which is in heaven is perfect." One 
fundamental difference, however, has made the 
1 " Republic," tr. Jowett, 472. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 73 

Republic a visionary dream and the Gospel a prac- 
ticable hope. To Plato the moralization of politics 
was to be the task of those elect natures in whom 
" political greatness and wisdom meet in one." 
A spiritual aristocracy was to be the hope of the 
world, while commoner natures were to " stand 
aside." So long as this rule of the best was 
lacking, the part of a wise citizen was to retreat 
from the disorders of his own age, "like one who 
retreats under the shelter of a wall in the storm 
of dust and sleet . . . and is content if only he 
can live his own life and be pure from evil and un- 
righteousness." * No such self -considering flight 
from an unredeemed world is permissible to the 
disciple of Jesus Christ. He is bidden, not to hide 
from the storm, but to face it; not to shelter his 
own life, but to seek and save the lives that are 
lost. In short, he is called to a work of social 
redemption. He comes not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister; to give, not a doctrine for the 
satisfaction of the few, but a life for the ransom 
of many. "Evils, Theodoras," said Plato, "can 
never perish. . . . Wherefore we ought to fly 
away thither, and to fly thither is to become like 
God, so far as this is possible." 2 "Blessed are 
ye," said Jesus, in quite another spirit, "when 
men . . . shall say all manner of evil against you." 

1 "Republic," 496. The contrast is convincingly described 
in Barbour, op. cit., p. 204 fL 

2 "Theaetetus," 176, tr. Jowett, III, p. 400. 



174 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

"I pray, not that Thou shouldest take them out 
of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them 
from the evil." "Thy will be done, on earth as 
it is in heaven." The teaching of Plato remains 
an intellectual solace for those to whom the ten- 
dency to social equality seems a menace and of- 
fence ; the Gospel of Christ is the charter of a spirit- 
ual democracy which, in spite of the hypocrisy 
and unscrupulousness that have stained the history 
of Christian nations, still remains the political ideal 
which commands the imagination of the world. 

Here, then, are two types of political ethics 
which seem in absolute conflict with each other, — 
the conception of the State as an instrument of 
gain or conquest, and the conception of the State 
as a moral organism, an agent of idealism, a pre- 
liminary stage in the evolution of the Kingdom of 
God. At this point, however, where it would 
seem that a choice must be made, there is disclosed 
the perennial paradox of politics, which no serious- 
minded statesman or citizen can safely ignore or 
deny. On the surface of events the schemes of the 
"practical politician" may be, and often are, tem- 
porarily dominant and profitable. He may be 
unscrupulous in strategy and skilled in evasion, 
justifying the means by the end, convinced that, 
as an American politician is reported to have said, 
"the Golden Rule has no part in politics." His 
success may infect many minds with the poisonous 
impression that politics is nothing else than the 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 75 

manipulation of a machine, the dividing of spoils, 
or the playing of a game with the State as the 
board and the people as pawns. 

Yet, when the deeper currents of national feel- 
ing and permanent loyalty are traced, they dis- 
close below these turbulent eddies of political 
intrigue a less conspicuous and often unobserved 
movement of national feeling or conviction or honor 
or duty, which gives direction and momentum to 
the stream of events, and which has its source in the 
hidden springs of political idealism. The politician 
who fancies his profession to be fundamentally one 
of trades or bribes or profit or partisanship may 
have his day and cease to be ; but the statesman who 
identifies himself with a cause, an ideal, an even 
remotely possible reform, may be swept with its 
advance into permanent affection and honor. The 
epochs which have determined the destiny of 
nations have not been, as a rule, periods of com- 
mercial expansion or military success, but those 
dramatic moments when some compelling ideal of 
nationality, liberty, democracy, justice, compas- 
sion, or religion has flashed before the conscience of 
the people, as the Cross appeared in the heavens 
to Constantine with its summons: "In this sign, 
conquer." Behind the political achievement of 
Cavour, an event described by Lord Morley as 
"the most important fact in European history for 
two centuries," * was the ideal of a united Italy, 
1 "Notes on Politics and History," 1914, p. 30. 



176 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

seen from afar by Mazzini, and inspiring the 
volunteers of Garibaldi. It was the resistless 
appeal to patriotism of Fichte's "Addresses to 
the German Nation," which fired the heart of 
Prussia to repel Napoleon. The brutalities of 
commercialism in England were chastened by the 
whip of Carlyle's irony. The rights of the plain 
people to free bread and free franchise were secured 
in Great Britain by a Quaker, of whom his biog- 
rapher said, " religious feeling was the very basis 
of his life ; he practised the silence of his sect and 
drew thence the strength of his soul, the purity 
of his heart, and the quality of his speech." * The 
Civil War of the United States in 1861 was, as 
Wendell Phillips said, "a conflict of ideas. . . . 
Every soldier in each camp is certain that he is 
fighting for an idea which holds the salvation of 
the world." 2 Even the ambition of Napoleon 
had to disguise itself in the garb of the glories of 
France; and the cruelties of Alva to be justified 
as marks of devotion to the Catholic faith. 

Such is the paradox of politics. What at first 
appears to be a record of self-seeking conspiracies 
and merciless intrigues has been, in fact, at its most 
critical points determined by some fresh accession 
of feeling, sentiment, passion, hope, or faith. The 
politicians play the game, but a veiled figure be- 

1 G. M. Trevelyan, " Life of John Bright," 1913, p. 3. 
2 Cited in the convincing Lectures of E. D. Adams, "The 
Power of Ideals in American History," 1913, p. 59. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 77 

hind their backs prompts the decisive moves and 
determines the final issue. The things that are 
seen are temporal, and the things that are not 
seen are eternal. Political schemes may accom- 
plish their immediate ends, and " ideas," in 
Eucken's phrase, "may be overgrown by in- 
terests " ; * but as one surveys the total move- 
ment of national and international affairs, in its 
slow yet resistless sweep, it is obvious that the 
far-sighted statesman has been he who, as Cavour 
said of himself, has had "more faith in ideas than 
in cannon for mending the lot of humanity," 2 
and has launched his cause on the stream of na- 
tional idealism with the assurance that it is the 
river of destiny. 

A well-informed observer of international affairs, 
whose views of diplomacy are far from those of a 
sentimentalist, has stated this paradox in his con- 
clusion that modern politics is dominated by 
two forces, neither of which is itself political. 
"Behind the facade of Government," Mr. Fuller- 
ton says, "two occult powers . . . are now de- 
termining the destinies of the world. One of 
them is the disseminated wealth of the democracy 
. . . the other is the mysterious, pervasive force 
known as public opinion." The first of these 
powers is conspicuous enough. National security, 
the capacity either for self-defence or for aggression, 

1 "Life's Basis and Life's Ideal," tr. 191 1, p. 363. 

2 Morley, op. cit., p. 172. 

N 



178 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

has become largely a question of money. Bankers 
may determine whether war or peace shall prevail. 
The conflicts of nations are more frequently in- 
cited by commercial than by political motives. 
The second power, however, — that of public 
opinion, — is more subtle but not less effective. 
It is, in fact, another name for the unprecedented 
part now played by the social conscience of a 
nation, compelling politicians to represent, or at 
least to pretend to represent, the ideals of the 
people. " Idealism," this author concludes, " seems 
to hold its own in spite of the corrupting power of 
wealth." l The two forces may indeed operate 
not in opposition, but in cooperation. Wealth 
may be an instrument of idealism. "The general 
desire for reform, and the fact that money is to-day 
the chief method of rapid and successful action, are 
merely different aspects of the same habit of mind." 
In other words, though modern politics may 
utilize commercial advantage, and may accept 
as its agents the forces of money, navies, tariffs, 
and loans, it will proceed with hesitancy and ap- 
prehension unless it be reenforced by the popular 
will, the national conscience, the force of public 
opinion, the dynamic of political idealism. What 
the philosophers of government, from Plato to 
Burke, have seen as a vision, thus turns out to be 
the only substantial foundation of a stable State. 
The Kingdom of God, of which Jesus dreamed, 
1 W. M. Fullerton, op. cit., p. 196. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 79 

may be far from realization ; but to believe in it 
and to convert the prayer for its coming into consist- 
ent and patient service, is not only Christian 
idealism, but political wisdom. Politics, in short, 
has its external machinery and its interior 
dynamic, and each factor has its place. Engineers 
are necessary, but so also are seers. Precisely 
as a system of telegraphy is externally a network 
of wires and posts and clicking instruments, through 
which pass the unseen messages of minds and 
hearts, so in a system of politics, legislation and 
administration are the intricate and ingenious 
links of communication through which the will of 
people is transmitted and expressed. 

The paradox of politics thus disclosed, — its 
superficial materialism disguising its underlying 
idealism, its intended schemes overruled by its 
unforeseen emotions, — finds a most striking illus- 
tration in the experience of the United States. 
That " melting-pot" of the nations, though it may 
some day fail in its vast problem of assimilation, 
has thus far succeeded in producing from its in- 
finitely varied materials a civilization which is rec- 
ognizable as the American type. This type, how- 
ever, is not so simple as its observers often suppose. 
It has its obvious and its more fundamental traits, 
and it is not until its paradoxical character is 
appreciated that the apparently illogical and often 
surprising incidents of American politics are ex- 
plained. 



l8o THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

The obvious fact in the United States is the 
growth, on a tremendous scale, of a commercial 
democracy. Vast natural resources and a remark- 
able ingenuity in utilizing them, energy joined with 
opportunity, have created a people much devoted 
to money-making and amazingly successful in that 
pursuit. Foreign students of the United States 
are so impressed by this aspect of the national 
character that they are easily led to believe it the 
dominating force of American life. The country, 
they report, is hopelessly materialized and com- 
mercialized, and its people so unscrupulous and 
mercenary as to be described in the markets of 
Europe as the American peril. The most distin- 
guished economist of Germany, for example, has 
thus expressed himself: "The youthful civiliza- 
tion, the incompleteness of conditions, the extraor- 
dinary chance of gain in a land which thus far 
seems inexhaustible, place in the foreground the 
' self-made man/ completely devoted to the mak- 
ing of money. Precocious children and immature 
youths throw themselves into the chase of the dol- 
lar. . . . The people have energy, but no deep cul- 
ture, no richness of disposition, no amiability .... 
Life is all work, speculation, hustle, gain or loss. 
. . . Enthusiasm is rare, self-restraint is essential 
for the money-maker. The sight of Niagara Falls 
excites in the American only a regret that so much 
water-power is running to waste. . . . The life 
of the American has been compared with a rushing 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE l8l 

locomotive ; the European trudges by its side as a 
quiet pedestrian." * To the same effect are the 
conclusions of an English observer: " Business is 
king. ... The human soul can strike no roots in 
the America of today." 2 It is the same indict- 
ment which Ruskin made a generation ago, "The 
Americans are, as a nation, undesirous of rest and 
incapable of it, irreverent of themselves both in 
the present and the future, discontented with what 
they are and having no ideal of anything which 
they desire to become, as the tide of a troubled 
sea that cannot rest." 

No candid critic can deny that these statements 
are justified by many incidents of American life. 
The unscrupulous making of money and the reck- 
less spending of it are both familiar facts in the 
United States, and bring with them the' inevitable 
consequences of speculation, vulgarity, physical 
degeneracy, and moral decay. Yet the American 
character is but half-explained if it seems of an 
uncomplicated and coarsely commercial type. 
Further acquaintance with national history, or 
closer observation of the deeper movements of 
national life, discloses another trait which may 
seem quite inconsistent with this commercial 
acquisitiveness, but which is, in fact, not less 
typical or persistent. It is a hereditary suscep- 

1 Schmoller, " Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaf ts- 
iehre," 1900, 1, s. 157. 

2 A. E. Zimmern, Sociological Review, July, 191 2, p. 212. 



l82 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tibility to idealism. By one of the most curious 
coincidences in human history, a people which 
was to become so conspicuously devoted to com- 
mercialism had, from the beginning, in their blood 
a distinct strain of moral seriousness. Of the early 
migrations which stamped their mark on national 
character some, it is true, were promoted by the 
lust for gold ; but by far the greater number were 
adventures of moral protest or of religious zeal. 
Across the Northern wastes marched the bearers 
of the Cross, conquering the wilderness for Christ. 
Pilgrims and Puritans abandoned for conscience' 
sake the smiling villages of England and settled on 
the stern coast of an unknown continent, between 
the savages and the sea. The sombre valleys of 
the Alleghenies rang with the hymns of German 
Pietists; the Moravians penetrated the untrav- 
elled waste which is now Ohio. Inheritances 
like these are not easily obliterated. Even the 
marvellous expansion of commercialism has not 
altogether suppressed the American tendency to 
convert each incident of political experience into 
a moral problem. Liberty, justice, compassion, 
magnanimity, service, — these words unlock the 
meaning of many events and touch with nobility 
and romance many of the most significant incidents 
of American history. "It is fundamentally false," 
a discerning critic has said, "to stigmatize the 
American as a materialist and to deny his idealism. 
The cardinal point of his whole activity is not 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 83 

greed, or the thought of money, but the spirit of 
self-initiative." * 

Here is the paradox of American politics. Ac- 
quisitiveness and generosity, hardness and softness, 
the spirit of commercialism and the faith of 
idealism, contend for mastery. The same people 
who have impressed observers as sharp traders 
and keen politicians have surprised the world 
by acts of unprecedented magnanimity and ro- 
mantic self-denial. What other nation, while re- 
jecting the principle of a State Church, maintains 
through the voluntary gifts of its population vast 
organizations for worship, as if to testify that it 
has, not only territory to develop and products 
to sell, but a soul to save ? What other country 
ever received an indemnity from a foreign Govern- 
ment and returned it, only to receive it once 
more in the form of stipends for the education 
of youths sent to the United States by the 
grateful land? When did another nation win 
territory and return it to its occupants, as in 
Cuba, or hold it in trust, as in the Philippines? 
When did ever another nation at the end of a war 
like that with Spain transport the defeated army to 
their homes across the sea ? When did ever a great 
Power pause with such scrupulousness before pun- 
ishing a weaker neighbor, like Mexico, and mean- 
time provide for her refugees friendly shelter and 
support? Or when did any other nation, having 

1 Hugo Munsterberg, " The Americans," 1904, pp. 236, 239. 



1 84 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

taken possession of a strip of land and at enormous 
cost built a Canal, even propose to satisfy its 
conscience by a voluntary payment to the former 
owners, or to open the Canal on equal terms to the 
fleets of the world ? Works of supererogation like 
these indicate a more complex type of character 
than a nation of shopkeepers could produce. Un- 
der the hardness of American commercialism lies 
a richer soil, from which there has grown in 
American politics and diplomacy many an unex- 
pected and even Utopian scheme. The United 
States, a discerning Englishman has said, is " a land 
of contrasts." * There is a great deal of every- 
thing, prairie and mountain, fertility and desert, 
irreverence and piety, piracy and patriotism. 
Most fundamental of all is the contrast of com- 
mercialism with idealism. The crux of American 
politics is here. Can a nation which has made 
such conquests of nature learn to conquer itself? 
Gaining the world, will it lose its own soul ? Is the 
inherited idealism which still runs in the blood to 
be checked by the lethargy of national prosperity 
and a hardening of the national arteries to ensue ; 
or is it possible that the very dimensions and 
responsibilities of modern commercialism may 
quicken a new idealism and prolong the national 
vitality and health ? 

If political history teaches through this illus- 
tration the general lesson that beneath the opera- 

1 J. F. Muirhead, "The Land of Contrasts," 1898. 

m 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 85 

tions of self-interest and intrigue a moral purpose 
may be, with many retardations, fulfilled; if 
political action is fickle, tentative, and self-deceiv- 
ing unless it be the agent of the conscience and 
heart of a people, — then the fundamental duty of 
citizenship is plain. It is the education of political 
idealism. These accessions of emotion, or inherit- 
ances of conviction, may be foolishly or thought- 
lessly applied. The voice of the people may be 
far from an echo of the voice of God. A good 
conscience may not save one from a foolish vote. 
Designing politicians may even convert into moral 
issues what are, in fact, administrative problems, 
and may disguise their own designs in phrases of 
idealism. No words have been more misused or 
perverted than justice, equality, and liberty. " The 
dying words of Madame Roland," said Macaulay, 
"'0 Liberty, how many crimes are committed, 
in thy name ! ' were at that time echoed by many 
of the most upright and benevolent of mankind." * 
The same words are not unreasonably on many 
lips to-day. Liberty may commit crimes as easily 
as it may create character. Idealism, to be justi- 
fied, must be disciplined. The education of a 
country for self-government should include, not 
only a training in letters or trades, but the direction 
of its moral impulses to rational ends. Each public 
question discloses the paradox which has been 
described ; the superficial selfishness and the un- 

1 Macaulay, Essay on "Mirabeau," " Works," 1875, V, p. 616. 



1 86 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

derlying ideals ; and in each a wise result can be 
attained by nothing less than the sane and dis- 
criminating education of national idealism. 

The most impressive instance of this demand 
for the education of idealism is provided by the 
awful problem, now confronting every nation, of 
substituting reason for war in the settlement of 
international disputes. In spite of Hague Tri- 
bunals, Peace Endowments, International Bureaus, 
and the sympathetic interest of the vast majority 
of citizens in all countries, expenditure on prepara- 
tions for war has mounted without check, until in 
1913 the six great powers of Europe were, it is 
said, taxing themselves for this purpose the in- 
credible sum of more than one and a half thousand 
millions of dollars. This colossal and constantly 
increasing charge, which takes no account of the 
productive labor lost by more than five million 
men serving with the colors, must, it would seem, 
be tolerated for some profounder reason than a 
mere obsession of alarm, or a conspiracy of ship- 
builders, or a craze of militarism. Statesmen are 
not likely to risk national bankruptcy in order to 
quiet national hysteria. The great illusion that 
war is commercially profitable has been supplanted 
in most minds by the confession that war is hell. 
Why is it, then, that the nations, in spite of many 
protesting voices, still tacitly consent to these vast 
sacrifices of money and life ? It is because, in spite 
of its terrors, — if not because of them, — war has 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 87 

seemed through all human history the most ade- 
quate and available expression of political idealism. 
Honor, patriotism, sacrifice, nationality, unity, 
religious conviction, — all these high ideals have 
found their channel of utterance in the willingness 
to fight and die. A soldier's courage, fortitude, 
and daring have seemed to offer to character its 
crown. No better title could be found for a loyal 
disciple of him who said: " Blessed are the 
peace-makers/' than "A good soldier of Jesus 
Christ." This tradition of idealism has made 
peace appear unheroic, and war the proper sphere 
for gallant men. Rulers and nations have chafed 
when this opportunity for exhibiting manhood was 
denied. They have felt what Shakespeare's 
Falstaff called, "The cankers of a calm world 
and a long peace"; 1 or have lamented with his 
Gloster, "This weak, piping time of peace." 2 
The supreme test of courage, self -discipline, and 
loyalty has been found by men, as by other animals, 
in war. 

Such a tradition, then, reenforced by the ex- 
perience of all the centuries since man emerged 
from caves and fought with stones, is not to be 
overcome by declamations or convocations in the 
name of peace, or even by computations of the 
extravagance of war. "War," said Channing, in 
one of those many utterances in which his courage 

1 "Henry IV," Part I, IV, 2. 
*"Kidiaidin, , - I I 9 x. 



1 88 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

and his sanity met, "is not absolutely or in all 
possible cases a crime. ... I do not believe in 
escaping the responsibility of moral discrimina- 
tion by flying to an extreme principle." * Wars of 
aggression, jealousy, or revenge, that is to say, 
are crimes, not merely because people are killed, 
but because motives are vicious. Wars for self- 
defence, national integrity, or popular liberty may 
be, as Channing adds, "not inconsistent with the 
spirit of Christian love." The blessing of Jesus 
was not for those who merely praise peace or even 
pray for it, but for those who, by laying the founda- 
tions of international justice, equity, and honor, are 
worthy of the name of peace-makers. 

How, then, is it possible to perpetuate the 
ideals of courage and loyalty without the taint of 
brutality and blood ? They must be expressed in 
new forms of heroism, and applied to ventures of 
life and death not less splendid, and more honorable. 
"Much remains," wrote Milton to Cromwell, 

"To conquer still ; peace hath her victories 
No less renown'd than war ; new foes arise 
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. 
Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 2 

% 

No characteristic of the modern world is more 

significant than its increasing recognition of these 
types of heroism which may supplant or satisfy 

1 W. E. Channing, "Memoirs," 1851, III, p. 20. 

2 Sonnet XVI, "To the Lord General Cromwell." 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 89 

the martial instinct. In a brilliant'essay by Will- 
iam James 1 on " Moral Equivalents for War," he 
urges an organized movement to direct militarism 
to worthier ends. War, he says, has always 
represented the " strong life." " Militarism is 
the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood." 
"The horror makes the thrill." He proposes, 
therefore, a Utopian equivalent, — "the conscrip- ( 
tion of the whole youthful population" in an army 
of social service where "intrepidity, contempt of 
softness, and obedience to command" may "re- 
main the rock on which States are built." 

But is it, one may ask, necessary to wait for this 
universal and impracticable conscription to enforce 
new types of heroism ? Do they not, in fact, already 
exist and offer their summons to gallant youth? 
Is not " civic passion " even now urging many young 
men and women into the ranks of social service, 
and "contempt of softness" creating a new knight- 
hood of industry? A soldier runs occasional risk 
at an outpost, but for most of his days he is drilling, 
waiting, and polishing his arms, while many a 
wage-earner risks his life any hour on the end of a 
cantilever, or the top of a skyscraper, or at the 
throttle of an engine, or in the depths of a mine. 
It is exciting to destroy life at the risk of one's 
own ; but it is not less exhilarating, and may in- 
volve much greater danger, to rescue life at the 
risk of one's own. It is brave to be a soldier ; but 

1 "Memoirs and Studies," 191 1, p. 267 ff. 



190 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

it may be much braver to be a saviour. It takes 
courage to conquer savages with guns; but it 
takes much more courage to conquer savages 
with the sword of the spirit. It is heroic to lead 
a charge in battle ; but it is much more heroic to 
let a mosquito settle on one's hand and to die of 
yellow fever, that a world may be delivered from 
a scourge more terrible than war. No soldierly 
daring was ever greater than many a modern ex- 
ploit of medical research or missionary zeal. " To 
kill one's fellow-creatures/' wrote Erasmus to the 
Bishop of Trent in 1530, " needs no great genius, 
but to calm a tempest by prudence and judgment 
is a worthy achievement." " Away then/' said 
Channing, after rejecting the principle of peace at 
any price, " with the argument that war is needed 
as a nursery of patriotism! The school of the 
peaceful Redeemer is infinitely more adapted to 
teach the nobler as well as the milder virtues 
which adorn humanity." 

When Samuel Gridley Howe, the principal figure 
in American philanthropy, — a man who, as his 
biographer said, "combined the qualities of Sir 
Galahad and the Good Samaritan," — turned from 
fighting for Greek independence to his crusade in 
defence of the blind and the feeble-minded, it was 
not a suppression of his martial instincts, but a 
conversion of them. He was equally a soldier 
when he fought against Turks and when he fought 
against Legislatures, or released from its fleshly 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE igi 

prison the soul of Laura Bridgman. He had 
found, not a substitute for war, but a new way of 
warfare, not less romantic or heroic than at Misso- 
longhi or Athens. The titles given him by con- 
temporary observers were military titles, — "The 
Happy Warrior"; " The Chevalier " ; "The Good 
Knight"; and when Whittier wrote of him it 
was as "The Hero": — 

"Knight of a better era 
Without reproach or fear ! 
Said I not well that Bayards 
And Sidneys still are here?" 

Here, then, and in many other critical problems 
of political action, is indicated the place of the 
Christian life in the modern State. It is not a 
political agent or a legislative machine. An 
affiliation of Church with State is more likely to 
materialize the Church than to spiritualize the 
State. A State Church is more inclined to be a 
bulwark of conservatism than a quickener of the 
nation's conscience or a guardian of spiritual 
liberty. A governmental agency is more disposed 
to conform than to reform. The disciple of Jesus 
Christ may still wisely leave to the Caesars of the 
modern world the things which are theirs, and 
claim for the things of God the rights of a free 
Church in a free State. The Christian Church, 
however, has a much more fundamental part in 
political action. It is, for the Western world at 
least, the most effective agent in the education 



192 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

of idealism. Its business is to detect in each public 
issue, beneath the angry voices of partisanship, the 
still small voice of the national conscience, and to 
lift that subconscious and undefined emotion into 
rational and articulate expression, — in short, to 
apply to politics the Law of Love, and to diplomacy 
the Golden Rule. This is not, as many politicians 
imagine, mere sentimentalism ; it is, on the contrary, 
political wisdom. To hold before a community 
or a nation the ancient standards, " Better is a 
little with righteousness than great revenues with- 
out right," " Where there is no vision the people 
perish," is — in Emerson's phrase — to deal, not 
with glittering generalities, but with blazing ubiq- 
uities. These are the decisions which determine 
the destinies of nations. Precisely as a railway 
corporation posts on every wall the regulation, 
"Safety first!" so the Christian Church is called 
to preach, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and 
His righteousness." 

It is not enough, then, to say that the Chris- 
tian life may be practicable in a modern State, 
for the ideals which it cherishes are, in fact, the 
foundations of political stability. Without the 
vision of an ideal State, which Christians call 
the Kingdom of God, no modern State, and 
least of all a commercial democracy, can surviy€. 
"Democracy is possible," Woodrow Wilson, as 
Professor of Government, has said, 1 "only among 

1 "An Old Master and Other Essays," p. 117; cited by W. W. 
Willoughby, "The Nature of the State," 1907, p. 424. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 93 

peoples of the highest and steadiest political habit. 
It is the heritage of races purged alike of hasty 
barbaric passion and of patient servility to rulers, 
and schooled in temperate common counsel. It 
is an institution of political noonday, not of the 
half-light of political dawn." On no other terms 
can a country like the United States hope to be 
saved from a progressive paralysis of its vitality 
and efficiency. A renaissance of national idealism 
alone can solve the paradox of politics. The 
whole creation of Government travaileth in pain 
until now, waiting for the manifestation of the 
Christian life in the modern State. 1 

1 These pages were already in print when there descended upon 
an astonished world the terrific storm of European war, which 
seems to lay in ruins the faith of the idealist and to leave the 
principles of Christian Ethics like a devastated city in an army's 
track. Yet, as the causes of this carnage are more clearly dis- 
cerned it becomes obvious that instead of refuting these princi- 
ples they testify on the most tremendous scale to their validity 
and permanence. This chaos of the nations, it already appears, 
is not a consequence of rational decisions or immediate contro- 
versies, but the awful Nemesis which follows a long series of moral 
wrongs ; the tragic corollary of captured provinces, broken- trea- 
ties, territorial aggrandizement, and the duplicity of secret 
diplomacy. Never in human history was there such a fulfilment 
of the warning of Moses to the people of Israel : " Behold, you 
have sinned against the Lord ; and be sure your sin will find you 
out." Each act of arrogance or oppression committed by any 
nation, — and which of them is guiltless ? — each tortuous negotia- 
tion and evaded obligation, now meets its delayed retribution. 
The cynical divorce of politics from morality and of statesman- 
ship from idealism which the history of Europe records could 
have no other consequence than this apparently unprovoked and 
o 



194 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

uninterpretable war. And, on the other hand, if the United 
States is to have any share in the final restoration of peace, it 
will be because no question can be raised of its absolute good 
faith, its abnegation — so lately and impressively proved — of all 
desire for further territory, its abandonment of all diplomatic 
strategy, and the confidence of the world in its fundamental 
idealism. The issue of this apparent reversion to barbarism can 
be nothing less than the restriction of militarism, the substitution 
of reason for force in international disputes, and the application 
of the fighting instinct to constructive ends. 
September i, 1914. 



VII 

THE CHRISTIAN LIEE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

There remains for consideration one further 
question which in its first statement may seem 
superfluous, if not ironical. Is the Christian life 
practicable in the Christian Church? Are the 
conditions of organized Christianity, its standards 
of fellowship and its effect on character, such as 
to give to the Christian life reenforcement and 
momentum; or are the forces of commercialism, 
sectarianism, bigotry, and insincerity so formidable 
in the Christian Church as to block the free course 
of the Christian life and turn its flow toward other 
channels ? The Church exists, it may be assumed, 
to perpetuate and transmit the Power and Life 
derived from Jesus Christ. Has it fulfilled this 
sacred task? Has it subordinated all other am- 
bitions and desires? Does it now offer an unob- 
structed course for the water of Life? Is it a 
Power-house of effective service ? 

These questions may appear to some minds al- 
most insolent in their implications. Has not the 
Christian Church, it may be answered, throughout 
all its history, comforted the weak, consoled the 

195 



196 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

sad, preached the forgiveness of sins, and main- 
tained unprecedented agencies of benevolence and 
compassion ? Is not the Christian life, with its 
self-denial, its sacrifices, and its tranquillity, the 
product of this association and inheritance ? Shall 
not the tree be known by its fruits, the nature of 
the Christian Church by the beauty of the Christian 
character ? All this, and much more, may be justly 
affirmed. Yet it is not less obvious that it has 
often been hard for the Christian life to flourish in 
this soil. What incredible persecutions, what 
mistaken asceticism, what dehumanized saintship, 
what demoralizing charity the history of the 
Church records, and what lingering superstitions, 
arrogant assumptions, and mercenary aims still 
vitiate or neutralize its purpose ! The presumptu- 
ousness of the ecclesiastic, the competitive zeal 
of the sectarian, and — more than all — the sup- 
pression of a spiritual democracy by the domina- 
tion of wealth, — all these familiar characteristics 
of modern Christianity have made many a 
thoughtful observer turn away in despair or dis- 
gust, and conclude that the Christian life is im- 
practicable in the Christian Church. No attack 
on the Christian religion from without can 
compare in destructive effect with this betrayal 
of it from within. Intolerance and spiritual 
pride are more threatening than agnosticism and 
materialism. Nothing hinders the expansion of 
the Church among non-Christian nations so 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 1 97 

seriously as the un-Christian conduct of Chris- 
tians. The work of foreign missions is blocked by 
denominational rivalries and provincial bigotry 
more than by superstitions and barbarism. No 
allies of scepticism or atheism are so effective as 
the commercialized Christian and the church-going 
scamp. "Woe unto you," said Jesus, to the 
Churchmen of his day, "Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites, for ye devour widows' houses and for 
a pretence make long prayers. . . . Woe unto you, 
whited sepulchres . . . which outwardly appear 
righteous unto men but within are full of hypocrisy 
and iniquity." Many a critic of Christianity re- 
peats the same indictment to-day. The hypocrisy 
which permits in the same person prayer and 
plunder, the external decorum which tolerates ex- 
tortion within, the blind guides who strain out the 
gnat of heresy and swallow the camel of world- 
liness, still drive from the doors of the Christian 
Church many a seeker for consistency of character. 
The Christian life, even if it be practicable in the 
Christian Church, is not an inevitable or an un- 
obstructed growth. 

There are many reasons for this incomplete ful- 
filment of the mission of the Church. Undis- 
ciplined zeal may generate persecution, ignorant 
piety may promote animosity ; a great institution 
is always likely to become an inorganic form 
rather than a quickening soul, a historical monu- 
ment rather than a propelling force. All this 



198 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

may happen because the Church has to take human 
nature as it is. Much may be pardoned to small 
minds using as their instrument a great ideal. 
There is, however, one general tendency which 
the history of the Christian Church illustrates, 
and which has enormously increased this malad- 
justment with the Christian life. It is what may 
be called the intellectualizing of discipleship, the 
defining of fellowship in terms of intellectual con- 
sent rather than in terms of a moral pledge. 

When one recalls the symbols and confessions of 
the Church he is struck by a curious paradox. The 
general, even if tacit, agreement of unsophisticated 
people has always accepted the Christian life as 
the test of the Christian religion. However divided 
in opinion Christians may have been, however 
ruthlessly their creeds have excluded the uncon- 
verted from fellowship or condemned the un- 
baptized to perdition, whenever and wherever the 
Christian life, with its characteristic marks of 
sacrifice, service, and serenity, has been manifest, 
controversy has been silenced, divisive doctrines 
have been forgotten, and the Master's words 
remembered: "Not every one that saith unto 
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father 
which is in heaven." In the presence of such 
souls the Church repeats the Pauline teaching: 
"As many as are led by the spirit of God, they 
are the sons of God," and joins in the confession 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 1 99 

of Ignatius: " Where Jesus may be, there is the 
universal Church." * 

"From scheme and creed the light goes out, 

The saintly fact survives ; 
JThe blessed Master none can doubt, 

Revealed in holy lives. ,, 

This desire for fellowship in the spirit is, however, 
at once confronted by the fact that in the formal 
creeds and confessions of the Christian Church no 
such primacy has been unqualifiedly given to the 
Christian life. On the contrary, the terms of 
discipleship have been frankly intellectualized, so 
that consent to dogma rather than consecration 
of character has been the test of fellowship. To 
say this is neither to deny nor to depreciate the 
creeds of the Church. Every thoughtful man has 
a creed, and to denounce the creeds is simply to 
announce one's own creed. The creeds of Christian 
communions, however, divergent and conflicting 
as they may be in their propositions or articles, 
are in one respect singularly uniform in type. 
With scarcely an exception they intellectualize 
discipleship, assume the primary obligation of 
doctrinal agreement, and imply that the Christian 
religion is a dogma rather than a life. 

The Apostles' Creed, for example, of which most 
later Confessions are elaborations, while it dwells 
with solemn affirmation on the miraculous aspects of 

1 "Epistle to the Smyrnaeans," tr. Lightfoot, § 8 ; cf. Lightfoot's 
note on the word "Catholic," " Apost. Fathers," II, p. 320. 



200 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

the birth and death of Jesus Christ, makes no allu- 
sion whatever to the life and teaching which lie 
between. He was "born of the Virgin Mary . . . 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, 
and buried." " It leaps," a sympathetic expositor 
of this creed has lately said, "from the thought 
of his birth as a helpless infant to the thought of 
his suffering as a helpless victim. . . Nothing is 
said of the kingdom of God, or of our social ob- 
ligations and responsibilities; not a word of our 
duty to our equals or to those beneath us in privi- 
lege and opportunity ; not a word of the brother- 
hood of man, except what seems the pallid and 
narrow substitute of the communion of saints." * 
As a consequence of these omissions, therefore, 
one might repeat with entire conviction all its 
Christological articles without pledging himself 
at all to a consistently Christian life. Consent to 
these majestic propositions would not commit one 
even to honesty, chastity, or self-sacrifice, or make 
one ready for the Master's welcome: "Well done, 
good and faithful servant. Inasmuch as ye have 
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, 
ye have done it unto me." 

The Nicene Creed expands the same series of 
articles, with a more explicit definition of the 
Deity of Christ. The Athanasian Creed prefaces 
its. declarations with the solemn warning, "Who- 

1 G. A. J. Ross, " The God We Trust. Studies in the Devo- 
tional Use of the Apostles' Creed," 1913, p. 201. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH; 201 

soever will be saved, before all things it is necessary 
that he hold the Catholic Faith, which Faith ex- 
cept every one do keep whole and undefiled, without 
doubt he shall perish everlastingly." The Council 
of Trent confirms the Nicene Creed as "that prin- 
ciple wherein all who profess the faith of Christ 
necessarily agree." The Augsburg Confession, 
after defining the nature of God, the Son of God, 
the Church and the Sacraments, affirms "that 
those things only have been enumerated which it 
seemed necessary to say." The Thirty-nine Ar- 
ticles of the Church of England restate the creeds, 
enumerate the canonical Scriptures, describe the 
nature of sin, predestination, and salvation ; and 
conclude that "Holy Scripture doth set out unto 
us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must 
be saved." The Westminster Confession an- 
nounces "that it pleased the Lord at sundry times 
... to reveal himself . . . and afterwards . . . 
to commit the same wholly unto writing, . . . those 
former ways of God's revealing his will unto his 
people being now ceased." 

It is not necessary for the present purpose to 
enter into any discussion or express any doubt con- 
cerning the validity or authority of these venerable 
symbols. They have been wrought into the wor- 
ship of the Church, steadying its orthodoxy, en- 
riching its ritual, and lifting the minds of worship- 
pers to great conceptions of the ways of God with 
man. They should be approached with reverence 



202 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

as great monuments of ancient thought. What is 
immediately obvious in them all, however, is their 
common emphasis. They are declarations of 
dogma, not directions for life. They codify Chris- 
tian opinion rather than modify Christian char- 
acter. They invite an intellectual confession rather 
than a moral pledge. They make affirmations 
concerning which "all who profess the name of 
Christ necessarily agree," or which contain " those 
things which are necessary to say." Yet, all the 
while, the real tests of Christian discipleship are of 
quite another character, and are daily met by 
many lives to whom the affirmations of the creeds 
may be either a riddle or a stumbling-block. 
One might concur in the entire Nicene theology, 
accept the authority of Scripture, and maintain 
the efficacy of the sacraments, and yet be far from 
a follower of Jesus Christ ; and, on the other hand, 
one might be indifferent to all formal creeds, wel- 
come the higher criticism of Scripture, and deny 
the importance of sacraments, and yet so com- 
pletely yield himself to the spirit of Christ as to 
say with Paul, "I live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me," or with George Fox, " These 
things I did not see by the help of man . . . 
but I saw them by the light of the Lord Jesus 
Christ." x 

Here is the inevitable paradox of an intellectu- 
alized discipleship. When a distinguished prelate 
1 Journal, I, p. 101. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 203 

defines the Church as " The great company of the 
baptized/' he is confronted by the obvious fact that 
there are many baptized sinners and many unbap- 
tized saints. In short, these confessions, which ac- 
cording to the Athanasian Creed sum up the Catholic 
faith, are not confessions of faith, but deposits of 
opinion. Each is a record of ancient controversies 
— with Gnosticism, it may be, or Sabellianism, or 
Arianism — which once burned with volcanic fury, 
but are now little more than extinct craters. Chris- 
tian faith is, on the other hand, a spiritual condition 
of loyalty and trust, of Power and Life, which a creed 
may confirm, but which a creed cannot create. One 
may believe in the forgiveness of sins as a theological 
proposition without being thereby constrained to 
penitence for his own sins. One may believe in 
the resurrection of the body as a miracle without 
presenting his own body as a living sacrifice. The 
virgin-birth of Christ, as the greatest of modern 
theologians said a century ago, is in itself no ab- 
solute warrant of the Divine life of Christ. The 
work of Christ was not perfected in his suffering, 
but in his resignation to that suffering. * The in- 
carnation of God in Christ is a historical proposi- 
tion; the incarnation of Christ in the life of a 
Christian is a spiritual experience. The prayer of 
the Apostle is not that Christ may be defined in 
our minds, but that Christ "may dwell in your 

1 Schleiermacher, "Christliche Glaube," ed. 1861, II, ss. 67, 
101. 



204 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

hearts by faith" ; not that Christ may be confessed 
in a creed, but that Christ may be "in you, the hope 
of glory." 

A conspicuous instance of this intellectualiz- 
ing of Christianity is provided by the proposal 
of one American Communion for a "World Con- 
ference on Faith and Order," to promote the move- 
ment to Christian Unity. Comprehensive plans are 
made for this great consummation and to each pre- 
liminary document is prefixed the sublime prayer 
of Jesus Christ, "That they may all be one; 
as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they 
also may be one in us." When, however, one turns 
to the conditions of unity proposed, it appears 
that they are to be neither ethical nor religious, 
neither of obedience to Christ's commands nor of 
communion with his spirit, but dogmatic, confes- 
sional, intellectualized. To this enterprise for 
"the fulfilment of our Lord's prayer that all his 
disciples may be one" are invited "all Christian 
communions throughout the world which confess 
our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour." It is 
not necessary to dwell on the fact that a unity 
based on this bald assertion of the identity of 
Jesus with the Eternal God, and omitting all allu- 
sion to his human life, would be a curious reproduc- 
tion of the ancient Monophysite heresy, which the 
early Church was prompt to deny, and would 
at once be confronted by the teaching of Paul: 
"There is one God, and one mediator between God 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 205 

and men, the man Christ Jesus," and by the warning 
of St. Augustine : "If he were not man, man would 
not be redeemed." * A more elementary considera- 
tion is to be drawn from the obvious fact that such 
a programme of unity would fail to cover, either 
by inclusion or by exclusion, those whom Jesus 
Christ welcomed as his disciples. The confession 
that Christ was God is no conclusive evidence 
that he who makes it will follow Christ. "The 
devils also believe and tremble." "Not every one 
that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will 
of my Father which is in heaven." The exclusions 
of the Apostolic Church were ethical : "If any man 
have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his" ; 
its inclusions were spiritual : "As many as are led 
by the spirit of God they are the sons of God." 
This generous and fraternal effort to gain an 
end for which all Christians pray is, therefore, 
blocked at its very outset by its preliminary in- 
tellectualism. It must exclude many who are 
undeniably Christians and include some who are 
practically heathen. The difficulty is not in the 
Christology but in the substitution of Christology 
for life. It is a curious fact that if the only basis 
of Christian unity were the confession that Christ 
is God, then the prayer which makes the text of 
this whole enterprise, that all his disciples might be 

1 " Sed si ille non esset homo non liberaretur homo." Super 
psalmos. Ps. 63. 



206 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

one, as he and the Father are one, could never 
be fulfilled. 

These reflections, it must be repeated, do not 
raise the question of the veracity or authority of 
the Christian creeds. What is immediately evi- 
dent, however, is that they speak another language, 
strike another note, are pitched in another key, 
from those of obedience, loyalty, and discipleship. 
They may be demonstrably true and yet ethically 
subordinate. They may establish institutional 
Christianity without appreciably fortifying personal 
religion. "The weakness of our position," an An- 
glican lecturer has frankly said, "does not lie in the 
inadequacy of our definitions, but in the deadly fal- 
lacy of putting definition first and character sec- 
ond." x Jesus says, "If any man will do His will, 
he shall know of the doctrine" ; 2 the creeds reverse 
this chronology of Christian experience and make 
the knowledge of doctrine antecedent to the doing 
of the will. Jesus says, "Whosoever shall do the 
will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is 
my brother and sister and mother"; but many 
sectarian or ecclesiastical controversies erect bar- 
riers between those who are doing the will of the 
Father, as though they were neither brothers 
nor sisters, but enemies of the faith. A represen- 

1 Peile, "The Reproach of the Gospels," Bampton Lectures, 
1907, p. 21. 

2 "If any one is willing to do His will, he shall know about the 
teaching." (Weymouth.) 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 207 

tative of one important Communion has lately 
declined the suggestion of ecclesiastical fraternalism 
with the words: "Our system is nothing if not 
dogmatic. . . . Ours is a system based on the 
sacramental basis." * 

To explore the causes of this paradox would lead 
one far into Christian and even into pre-Christian 
history, but its consequences may be easily ob- 
served. To some minds it is sufficient that the 
mysterious and remote events described in the 
creeds are ratified by the testimony of a Divinely 
directed and infallible Church, which assures the 
permanence of dogma and within a prescribed area 
of truth fosters the practice of the Christian life. 
Other minds have undertaken to translate these 
archaic phrases into what seem their modern equiv- 
alents. "Begotten of the Father before all 
worlds" means that "the purposes Christ revealed 
always existed." "Incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
of the Virgin Mary" means that "man born of 
woman may be Divine." "Descended into hell" 
is merely "a matter of controverting those who 
declared Christ was taken from the cross before 
he died." 2 Or again, as proposed by another apolo- 
gist, " Conceived by the Holy Ghost" means "Con- 
ceived in the mind of God " ; "Born of the Virgin 
Mary," "confirms the fact that Jesus came forth 
not by chance or unaccountably" ; "The Resurrec- 

. * Constructive Review, October, 1913, p. 780. 
2 Churchill, "The Inside of the Cup," 1913, p. 288 ff. 



208 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tion of the body" (resurrectio carnis) means that 
"to every soul set free by death God gives a body 
as it hath pleased Him." * 

Neither of these ways of justification, however, is 
likely to commend the Christian Church to un- 
sophisticated modern minds. Esoteric ecclesiasti- 
cism lies altogether outside the horizon of free in- 
quiry ; and the accommodation of ancient symbols 
to modern thought seems more ingenious than 
convincing. It is equally hopeless to propose that 
theological research shall be delegated to a priestly 
caste, and to anticipate that articles of faith will 
long be solemnly repeated after their obvious 
meaning has been rejected. Among the first 
principles of the scientific habit of mind are the 
scrupulous use of words and rigid accuracy in 
definition. When, therefore, this habit of mind is 
met by such a controversy as is now agitating the 
Church of England, and which the letters of the 
Bishop of Oxford and the Lady Margaret Professor 
illustrate, 2 a perplexing division of sympathy 
is likely to ensue. On the one hand the modern 
mind regrets with Professor Sanday that the con- 
troversy "may make the ministry of the Church of 
England impossible for many thinking and in- 
structed men" ; but on the other hand it feels the 
force of Bishop Gore's contention that when "one 

1 Ross, op. cit. pp. 67, 73, 193. 

2 C. Gore, "The Basis of Anglican Fellowship/' etc., 1914; 
W. Sanday, " Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism," etc., 1914. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 209 

does not believe that we have adequate grounds 
for asserting that our Lord was in very fact born 
of a Virgin, and rose again the third day from the 
dead, he cannot legitimately, or with due regard 
to public sincerity, retain his position as an officer 
in a Church which requires of its officers the 
constant reiteration of the creeds." The dilemma 
thus created is inevitable. It is the corollary of 
the assumption that consent to these propositions 
is the basis of Christian discipleship. No Church 
can hope to possess at the same time flexibility 
and fixity, free inquiry and unchanging standards, 
the moral right to criticism and the moral obligation 
of conformity. The difficulty in an intellectualized 
Christianity is inherent and insurmountable, and 
it inevitably repels from interest in its discussions 
many modern minds. With grave reluctance and 
often with agony of spirit, they surrender their he- 
reditary claim to discipleship as inconsistent with 
the habit of mind in which they are irretrievably 
trained, and conclude that Christian loyalty is 
not practicable for them. The Christian life is 
not, after all, they infer, the supreme aim of the 
Christian Church. What they had sought in 
the Christian religion was not so much a cosmic 
drama as a way of life. What led them to Jesus 
Christ was not so much the mystery of his origin 
and destiny as his words, "Come unto me all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls." What they wanted was 



2IO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Power and Life; and no doctrinal system, they 
conclude, can communicate this dynamic morality. 
For such minds Christian teaching must either 
change its emphasis, or forfeit its supremacy. 
They have no quarrel with the creeds; their 
minds are simply turned another way. First 
a Christian experience and then a Christian the- 
ology to explain it ; first a doing of the will and 
then a knowledge of the doctrine, — that is the 
only chronology of discipleship which is likely to 
be verified by the spiritual history of a modern life. 
The paradox of creed and character, of conformity 
and consecration, of an external system and a 
spiritual message, which makes the Christian teach- 
ing so hard for many modern minds to receive, can 
be solved by nothing less than the frank recognition 
that religion is life, and discipleship obedience, and 
the creeds an effort of the reason to trudge with 
weary steps of demonstration along the way which 
the wings of the will have traversed in their un- 
hindered flight. "Thy faith hath saved thee," 
said Jesus to many a penitent and responsive dis- 
ciple who, as an American preacher has lately re- 
marked, "could not have repeated a single article 
of the Apostles' Creed." * 

What, then, must happen to the Christian Church 
if it is to provide an unobstructed channel for the 
Christian life ? In the first place, its demands must 
be simplified. When one compares the teaching of 

1 George Hodges, in Harvard College Chapel, May i, 1914. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 211 

Jesus with the practices and principles of organized 
Christianity, the contrast is not only striking, but 
humiliating. Few Christian communions welcome 
discipleship on terms which Jesus himself found 
sufficient, and into many, if he added nothing to the 
Gospel record, he would find entrance difficult for 
himself. It was once said by an American theolo- 
gian that no two forms of religious symbolism could 
be more remote from each other in spirit and inten- 
tion than the Lord's Supper and the Celebration 
of the Mass. A similar comment might be made 
on many definitions of faith and conditions of 
fellowship. Jesus, in the most definite announce- 
ment of his mission, said, "Not every one that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the King- 
dom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my 
Father which is in heaven" ; and, again, "Why call 
ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I 
say"; and still again, "Seek first the Kingdom of 
God and His righteousness." It was a moral 
obedience which he sought, a dedication of desire, a 
loyalty to the ideal of the Kingdom of God. What 
kinship with this simplicity is to be found in the 
thirty-three chapters of the Westminster Confes- 
sion, or the thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism, or 
the sixty-seven Conclusions of Zwingli, or the 
fifty and more pages of the Lutheran Formula of 
Concord, with its concluding words, "This is 
the faith, doctrine, and confession of us all, con- 
cerning which we are prepared to render account at 
the Last Day." 



212 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

Here is not a question of truth, or authority, 
or scriptural indorsement; it is a question of 
emphasis, of dominant note, of central inten- 
tion. However profoundly these historic con- 
fessions may express the nature of God and man, 
it is evident that they are set in a different key from 
the teaching of Jesus. To affirm that it is concern- 
ing these matters of faith and confession that one 
must be prepared to give an account at the Last 
Day is to forget that in the teaching of Jesus con- 
cerning that Last Day when "the Son of man shall 
come in his glory," it was not because of any 
conformity to faith, doctrine, or confession, but be- 
cause one had given meat to the hungry, clothed 
the naked, and visited the prisoner, that the wel- 
come was given, " Inasmuch as ye have done it 
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
have done it unto me." Here is a change of 
spiritual climate, a simplification of discipleship. 
The Christian life becomes the test of orthodoxy, 
and the Christian Church the instrument and wit- 
ness of the Christian life. To set a declaration of 
dogma in the place of a pledge of loyalty is to hear 
once more the poignant protest of Jesus himself, 
"They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be 
borne, and lay them on men's shoulders" ; and the 
still severer irony of Peter, "Why tempt ye God, 
to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which 
neither our fathers nor we were able to bear ? " It 
was a wise saying of Bishop Hall in the Seventeenth 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 213 

Century which Lord Morley has preserved, — that 
"the most useful of all books on theology would 
be one with the title i De paucitate credendorum ' 
— of the fewness of the things which a man must 
believe." 1 

The transition thus indicated may perhaps be 
more accurately described in the language, not of 
theology, but of psychology. Throughout the 
history of the Christian Church the prevailing 
emphasis has been laid either on the reason or on 
the emotions as the organ of a religious life. Either 
the reason must be convinced, or the emotions must 
be stirred, if Christian discipleship is to be attained. 
The creeds of the Church have addressed the reason 
and invited an intellectual approval ; the practice 
of the Church has appealed to the feelings and 
quickened the emotional life with high affections 
and desires. Each of these paths to communion 
with God has its place in the teaching of Jesus. 
His thought uttered itself in great generalizations 
which might have given him a name among the 
world's philosophers if he had not been assigned a 
more exalted place. His feelings rose into spiritual 
insight which has fortified, through all the Christian 
centuries, the mystic's vision and faith. When, 
however, Jesus makes his first appeal to those who 
would be his disciples, it is neither to their reason 
nor their emotions that he primarily turns, but to 
their wills. " Follow me," he says, "Take up your 
1 "Oliver Cromwell," 1900, p. 150. 



214 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

cross and follow." "He that willeth to do the will 
shall know of the doctrine." The specific petitions 
of the Lord's Prayer, — for bread, forgiveness, and 
deliverance from evil, — are postponed until the 
fundamental desire, to do God's will and to serve 
His Kingdom, is expressed. Not theological accu- 
racy nor mystic illumination, but moral decision, is 
his first demand. "I am the way, the truth, and 
the life" — first the way, and along the way a 
better knowledge of the truth, and at the end of the 
way, what the Book of Revelation calls the Crown 
of Life. Here is no conflict between creed and 
character, or between feeling and will. A mind that 
thinks must have a theology, even though its 
theology be destructive ; a heart that beats must 
love and adore, whether the object of its affection 
be human or Divine. Neither of these expressions 
of religion, however, nor both of them, disclose the 
original source of loyalty, decision, and obedience. 
The preliminary and direct approach to Christian 
discipleship is neither through theological accuracy 
nor mystical communion, but through the dedica- 
tion of the will; and whatever obscures or com- 
plicates that elementary decision deters from dis- 
cipleship many who would welcome "the simplicity 
that is toward Christ." 

To the simplification of the Christian teaching 
must be added, secondly, its socialization. No 
sign of the present time is so conspicuous as its 
summons to social responsibility and social action. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 21$ 

It is the age of the Social Question. Never in 
human history were so many people, learned and 
ignorant, employers and employed, wise and other- 
wise, concerned with problems of social adjustment 
and with tasks of social service. The most charac- 
teristic discovery of the present generation is not 
the telephone, or the automobile, or the aeroplane, 
but the social conscience; the new acceptance of 
duty as beginning in social obligation and ending 
in social redemption. It is by no means deter- 
mined, however, what part in this vast and varied 
enterprise the Christian Church is to play. That it 
has waked to the consciousness of a new world is 
evident. Schemes of social service, committees, 
charities, and conferences are to be found in the 
programme of each communion and congregation ; 
but this extension of responsibility is still frequently 
regarded as extraneous to the proper work of the 
Christian Church, a Department of Foreign Affairs 
to be distinguished from the interior tasks of ad- 
ministration or inspiration. "The real business of 
the Church," a synod cited by Professor Rauschen- 
busch has affirmed, "is to preach the Gospel. 
It is not the mission of the Church to abolish physi- 
cal misery or to help men to earthly happiness." * 
This uncertainty as to the province of the Church 
and hesitancy to annex further territory as its own, 
have had their inevitable effect. The social move- 
ment of the present time has in large part proceeded 
1 "Christianizing the Social Order," 191 2, p. 24. 



2l6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

as though the Christian Church did not exist, or 
were either a neutral or a hostile power. " Society," 
an English scholar has said, "has absorbed into its 
tissue a large measure of that moral idealism of 
which the Church once seemed the solitary repre- 
sentative. The Church has stood aloof from the 
world, and now the world takes revenge by main- 
taining the position assigned to her and stand- 
ing aloof from the Church." * The more pro- 
foundly one is moved by the iniquities of industry 
and the sins of civilization, the more bitterly he 
is likely to protest against this wavering attitude 
of the Church, until at last he may regard it as 
either an obstruction or an enemy. "My asso- 
ciates," the President of the American Federation 
of Labor has stated, "have come to look upon the 
Church and the ministry as the apologists and 
defenders of the wrong committed against the 
interests of the people." 

Here, then, is a curious situation. The motives 
and ideals which have been most characteristic of 
the Christian life are appropriated by many who 
refuse to accept the Christian name. Fraternity, 
social justice, cooperation, sacrifice, the bearing of 
others' burdens, — the very words which are 
expressive of Christian discipleship, are inscribed on 
banners of new schemes and dreams ; and organiza- 
tions of philanthropy, cooperative industry, trades- 
unionism, and socialism go sailing buoyantly down 
1 L. P. Jacks, Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1906, p. 17. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 217 

the river of the age, while the Christian Church 
looks on from the bank and sees its own insignia 
on these alien flags. In such a situation what is 
meant by the socialization of the Christian Church ? 
The new expansion of meaning now given to the 
word itself is instructive here. When social science 
speaks of a " socialized" charity-worker, or a 
"socialized" judge, or a "socialized" scheme of 
reform, it does not merely mean that these are 
agents of social service. It means that their hori- 
zon is broader than their immediate tasks, that they 
look before and after, to causes and consequences, 
to the community as well as to the case, to the 
concomitant circumstances and the general good. 
They are not technical and specialized in their pur- 
pose, but comprehensive and "socialized." They 
deal, so far as they may, with the whole of life, not 
with a fragment ; with the organism of society rather 
than with the isolated atom. 

It must be the same with a socialized Church. 
It is a Church which comprehends within its 
proper sphere, not worship, clergy, doctrine, 
and charity alone, but the whole troubled world 
of modern life, its conflicts of classes, its dis- 
sensions of industry, its problems of politics, its 
sins of property. It accepts the Pauline teach- 
ing, "All things are yours"; not the sectarian 
interests of Paul and Apollos and Cephas alone, 
but the larger problems of the world and life and 
death and things present and things to come. It 



2l8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

remembers the great word of Wesley: " There 
is no such thing as a solitary Christian" ; and sets 
itself, not to save the individual out of a perishing 
world, like a passenger rescued from a sinking 
ship, but to the more heroic task of rallying both 
passengers and crew to bring the world itself, like a 
battered but still seaworthy vessel, safe to port. 
"The Church," Phillips Brooks has finely said, "is 
but the type of the complete humanity, — elect, 
not that it may be saved out of the world, but that 
the world may be saved by its witness and specimen 
of what the whole world is in its idea." * 

Anything less than this is not only an unsocial- 
ized, but an ineffective Church. Its power is ex- 
hausted in turning its own wheels. Its life is 
atrophied because it is not communicated. When 
the apostle Paul declares himself a "minister and 
witness," he uses a "socialized" word. What the 
translation calls a "minister" is, in the Greek, a 
rower in a galley, one of the crew, who puts his back 
into his work and keeps stroke with the rest. 2 The 
Church, if one may render the Pauline figure into 
a modern equivalent, is not a harbor where its 
"ministers and witnesses" comfort shipwrecked 
souls, but a life-saving station, where a crew is 
trained to save those who cannot find a harbor, 
and to take the risks of brave men who launch out 

1 "The Influence of Jesus," 1879, p. 129. 

2 Acts XXVI, 16; vtttjp^ttjSj = " an under-rower, under-sea- 
man; distinguished from vavrai and ip&r ai" (Liddell and Scott.) 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 219 

into the deep. That is the task of the Christian 
minister to-day. He is not an official giving orders 
from the shore, or a compassionate landsman 
surveying the scene. "He forgets," as a great 
English teacher has said, "the outworn petition of 
the Collect, i that we being freed from the fear of 
our enemies may pass our time in rest and quiet- 
ness.' "* He does not ask for rest and quietness, but 
for a chance to save. He has no time for the fear 
of his enemies because he is busy at his oar. He is 
one of a crew, trained to pull against wind and tide ; 
enlisted not to be ministered unto, but to minister 
and to give his life a ransom for many. When 
Jesus in his own town wished to announce his 
message, he opened the ancient Scriptures and 
applied the words of Isaiah to himself. The Spirit 
of the Lord was on him, he said, anointing him to 
heal, to deliver, to give sight, to set at liberty, as 
well as to preach. It was a socialized faith. His 
field, he said, was the world. The world, as the sig- 
nificant title of a notable English book announced, 
is the subject of redemption. 2 The socialization of 
the Church is not alone its adaptation to the present 
age; it is its restoration to the purpose of Jesus 
Christ. 

At this point, also, it must be added, is the open 

X J. R. Seeley, "The Church as a Teacher of Morality," in 
"Roman Imperialism and Other Essays," 1871, p. 269. 

2 W. H. Fremantle, "The World as the Subject of Redemp- 
tion," 1885. 



220 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

door to that great consummation of Christian unity, 
which is now as never before in history inviting the 
imagination and desire of the Christian world. 
How eagerly and prayerfully the various commu- 
nions are considering what each may surrender, and 
what each must maintain as essential to a Chris- 
tian Church; and how impenetrable seems the 
wall of division which confronts each approach 
as it reaches the opposing claim of Immersion or 
Sacraments or Orders ! Intelligent heathen listen 
with amusement or contempt while devoted mis- 
sionaries preach a sectarian Gospel or commend 
a divided Church. Intellectual agreement grows 
less probable as intellectual honesty increases and 
critical learning dissects; until at last the pre- 
posterous position is reached where fellow-mission- 
aries may not, without serious protest, take together 
that bread and wine of which their common Master 
said, "This do in remembrance of me." Yet 
all the while the real unity of the Christian Church 
is not only accessible, but at many points attained. 
It is one of the most curious aspects of the time 
that Christians who cannot worship together are 
glad to work together, and though, as has been 
finely said, they "refuse to partake under the same 
roof of the bread and wine, do not hesitate to unite 
in taking the basin and towel and in imitating the 
Saviour in his acts of lowly service." 1 What 
is the meaning of this happy association in work 
1 C. E. Jefferson, Constructive Review, Apr. 1914, p. 65 ff. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 221 

of minds dissociated in thought? It means that, 
while the Church is almost unaware of the fact, 
the only practicable unity, a unity of Life and 
Power, has at such points actually arrived. It 
comes not through discussion but through de- 
votion; not by the agreement of Councils but 
" without observation"; not by a concurrent 
consent to doctrine, but by a cooperative conse- 
cration to do the will; not by the segregation of 
the sects but by the socialization of the Church. 
Wherever Christians have great things to do 
together there the problem of unity has been, not 
so much solved, as left behind. That is the lesson 
which stay-at-home Christians are learning from 
the new spirit in Foreign Missions. If the mighty 
task of Christianizing the Orient is to be fulfilled 
many differences of form and method which may 
seem vital to the Churches at home must be, not 
denied, but forgotten, in the supreme desire to 
carry the Master's message, "I am come that 
these may have my life and may have it abun- 
dantly." Christian unity, in fact, seems more 
likely to be imported from Foreign Missions to 
the home-Churches than to be discovered in the 
leisure of ecclesiastical debates; unless indeed 
the home-Churches wake to the momentous dis- 
covery that a similar missionary opportunity is 
knocking at their own doors. 

There remains one further question. How is this 
socialization of the Christian Church to be at- 



222 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

tained ? Does socialization involve secularization ? 
Is worship to be supplanted by work, theology by 
sociology, communion with God by the service of 
man? On the contrary, it is precisely at this 
point that the highest function of the Christian 
Church is disclosed. Its mission is not that of 
secularization, but that of spiritualization. It 
looks on all this perplexing and tragic scene of the 
modern world, not as from afar, with a sense of 
detachment and immunity, not as from without, as 
one who watches a great machine in its resistless 
revolutions, but as from within, as one who stands 
at the centre of a living organism and sees the un- 
folding of its vital growth. What is the most 
immediate and insidious peril which threatens the 
social movement of the present age? It is the 
peril of a practical materialism, the interpretation 
of this vast and varied enterprise of responsibility, 
fraternity, and hope, as an external, economic, or 
political transition, instead of a human, ethical, and 
spiritual adventure. The philosophy of revolution 
is in part to blame for this misinterpretation. In 
its desire to picture social change as inevitable it 
has described that change as automatic and 
mechanical. Revolutionize the methods of pro- 
duction and exchange, it has taught, and the ideals 
of the human heart will be transformed. The law 
of economic determinism governs not only the 
industrial, but also the spiritual life. We are what 
our conditions of labor compel us to be. "The 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 223 

mode of production in material life," said Marx in 
one of his most famous aphorisms, " determines 
the general character of the social, political, and 
spiritual processes of life." * 

The same materialism in a less reasoned form 
degrades and dehumanizes great areas of the 
modern world. Prosperous people, reckoning their 
happiness in terms of income and expenditure; 
employers, regarding their employees as cogs in 
a great machine; wage-earners, subdued to that 
they work in like the dyer's hand, with no 
horizon beyond the closing hour and the pay- 
envelope; poor people with no ideal but the 
rent and no solace but the saloon, — what a mock- 
ery is here of a world of souls, a spiritual brother- 
hood, an answer to the prayer, "Thy Kingdom 
come ... in earth as it is in heaven" ! Into this 
world of materialized aims enters the Christian life, 
utilizing as its agent a socialized Church to carry 
the Gospel of spiritualization. It looks within the 
facts of social disorder for their spiritual causes. 
It converts the relief of the poor into a spiritual 
transaction, conveying not only food and lodging, 
but courage, self-control, and hope. It lifts the 
relations of industry from the level of a wage-system 
to the higher plane of a cooperative system. It res- 
cues the social world from its slough of fleshly and 
commercial aims and sets it on the rock of moral 
idealism. 

1 "Critique of Political Economy," tr. Stone, 1894, p. 11. 



224 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

A great teacher of the modern world has lately- 
said: "The corner-stone of all philosophical 
thought, and the axiom of axioms, is the fact of 
a world-embracing spiritual life." "With the 
attainment of independence by the spiritual life 
there emerges a distinctive kind of being." * This 
distinctive kind of being, this independence of the 
spiritual life, is the corner-stone which supports a 
spiritualized faith. Religion is not one more ma- 
chine like the mechanism of business or politics, 
but a power which may work through all the 
varied forms of social machinery for spiritual ends. 
To a generation hungry for more money, more 
luxury, more possessions, it says, "Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
proceedeth out of the mouth of God." To a com- 
mercialized generation, balancing its profit and loss, 
it says, "What is a man profited if he shall gain 
the whole world and lose his own soul ?" To those 
who have confused religion with politics, and fancy 
that the Church of Christ is one more external 
Empire with its titles and laws, its says: "The 
Kingdom of God cometh not with observation. . . . 
The Kingdom of God is within you." To set life 
in true perspective, to make the great things great 
and the small things small, to change a world of 
contending animals into a world of cooperating 
souls, — that is the mission of a spiritualized 
Church, of which all other tasks of the Church are 
imperfect and preparatory symbols. 

1 Eucken, "Life's Basis and Ideal," tr. 191 1, p. 160. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 225 

Is the Christian life, then, practicable in the 
Christian Church? That must depend in large 
degree on the Church itself. It can never be an 
easy thing to live a simplified, a socialized, and a 
spiritualized life ; but it is made much more diffi- 
cult in the atmosphere of an intellectualized, an 
individualized or an externalized Church. The 
dogmatic, provincial, or arrogant Church may gain 
the whole world, but may forfeit its own soul. The 
Church Militant may be so concerned with fighting 
other churches, or with fighting for its own existence, 
that those who want to fight the real sins of modern 
life may enlist under other banners. The hymnody 
of the Church is more apt to call worshippers to 
arms than to tell them what to do. The Christian 
life has a right to ask of the Christian Church 
specific marching orders. 

Nor is this all. As one looks back over the series 
of problems which have been briefly considered, — 
the life of the family, the work of the industrial 
world, the making and spending of money, and the 
perplexities of politics, — what is the redemptive 
force which each in turn has seemed to need ? It is 
a revival of idealism, a Life and Power of the spirit, 
an association with souls who have found their 
lives in God. To be surrounded by this cloud of 
witnesses is to run with a better patience one's own 
race. The affairs of home, and business, and poli- 
tics need the reenforcement of this collective 
righteousness. Precisely this organization of the 

Q 



226 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 

spiritual life is what the Christian Church may offer. 
It is a creation, not of dogmas or clergy or Councils, 
but of the personality of Jesus Christ wrought into 
the spiritual experience of the world. Men may 
build on this foundation, gold or silver, hay or 
stubble, but other foundation can no man lay than 
that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. The Christian 
Church is a community of souls touched by the 
contagion of the Christian ideal, a " spiritual house" 
built up of "lively stones." "The Church," a 
German scholar has lately said, "is essentially a 
school for sinners who would become saints. . . . 
Even if, as there seems little reason to believe, 
Jesus did in any way determine the organization 
and ceremonial of a Church, to take such 
external forms as anything more than means to 
the attainment of his spiritual aims is in contra- 
diction to the impression given by his whole life 
and teaching." 1 

What might not happen, then, in this troubled 
world of social problems and personal decisions, 
if there could be applied to it the Life and 
Power of this association of the spirit ; a Church 
which is not an end in itself, but the agent of a 
larger redemption; not sacred for its own sake, 
but sanctifying itself for others' sakes ! The 
province of the Christian Church, thus defined, 
becomes larger than many of its most zealous 
defenders have conceived. To it is given the 
1 Weinel and Widgery, op. cit, p. 440. 



CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 227 

supreme privilege of interpreting to the world its 
own meaning, and of saving the soul of the world. 
To accept this high privilege, and to subordinate 
to it all other ends, is the preliminary task of modern 
Christianity. " Cleanse first," said Jesus, "that 
which is within the cup and platter, that the out- 
side of them may be clean also." It is a stern 
summons to the Christian Church. A cleaner life 
in the family, a more fraternal world of business, 
the purifying of money-making, and the moralizing 
of politics, — all these are waiting for that antece- 
dent cleansing of the Church, which may make it 
an effective instrument of the great salvation. 
A simplified, socialized, and spiritualized Church 
is but another name for the Christian life, or- 
ganized to serve the modern world. The majestic 
promise of Jesus to his disciples is not that of an 
institutional maintenance, but of a spiritual con- 
tinuity, — not that of a scheme, but that of a 
Saviour: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world." 



INDEX 



Adams, E. D., 176 
Alexander the Great, 164 
Alva, Duke of, 176 
America. See under State 
American social life, 50 
Apostles' Creed, 199 
Aristocracy, spiritual, 173 
Aristotle's State, 168 
Arnold, Matthew, 25 
Asceticism. See Quietism 
Athanasian Creed, 200 
Augsburg Confession, 201 
Augustine, St., 164, 205 

B 

Bacon, Francis, 116, 152 

Balkan States, 163 

Barbour, 168, 173 

Barnett, Canon, 146 

Beaconsfield, Lord, 165 

Bebel, A., 8, 42, 80 

Benevolence. See Giving 

Bernard, St., 2 note 

Bismarck, Otto von, 163, 165 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, 163 

Bourgeoisie, 107 

Bradley, F. H., 6 

Bridgman, Laura, i$i 

Bright, John, 15, 165 

Brooks, Phillips, 152, 218 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 150 

Browning, Robert, 91 

Burdens, 158 

Burke, Edmund, 92 

Business: Christian life and, 76; 
encouraging aspect, 90 ; essential 
character, 100; fraternalism in, 



102 ; honor and credit, 97 ; Jesus' 
teaching, 81, 87; modern, criti- 
cisms on, 77 ; need of reform, 
101 ; real evil in, 81 ; selfishness 
of, 96 ; service to the world, 91 ; 
true estimate, 89 



Cabot, R. C, 94 

Caird, Edward, 30 

Cairns, D. C, 22 

Capital and labor, 79 

Carlyle, Thomas, 176 

Cavour, Count, 165, 175, 177 

Cecil, Hugh, 170 

Chamberlain, Houston, 44 

Channing, W. E., 187, 190 

Character and environment, 83 

Charity, 154. See also Giving 

Chesterton, G. K., 58 

Children, 52 ; care and training 
of, 61; individuality, 71; in- 
stitutions for, 69; Jesus and, 
46 ; problem of having, 60 

China, 164 

Christ, eternal, 13; imitation of, 
14. See also Jesus 

Christianity: as interim gospel, 
n, 24; Epistles as contain- 
ing, 13; fallacy in present-day 
criticisms, 23 ; modern conduct 
and, 15 ; present-day criticisms. 
2; reaction from, 19; senti- 
mental approval of, 18; true 
nature, 30, 35 

Christian life. See Family, Busi- 
ness, State, Church 

Christians, inconsistent conduct, 15 

Christology, 205 



229 



23° 



INDEX 



Church: ancient symbols and 
modern thought, 208 ; Christian 
life in the, 195; creed and 
dogma as tests of discipleship, 
199 ; creeds and life, 209 ; 
hypocrisies, 197, 198; intel- 
lectualization of its discipleship, 
199 ; motives and ideals ap- 
propriated by other bodies, 
216; paradox of intellectual 
discipleship, 202; practicability 
of Christian life in, 225; real 
mission, 215; revived idealism, 
225; secularization and spirit- 
ualization, 222; simple teaching 
needed, 210; socialization of 
teaching, 214; state and, 191; 
unity, 204, 220; weakness 
within, 196; world and, 216 

Church of England, controversy 
in, 208 

Civil War in the United States, 176 

Commercialism, 178, 181, 182, 184 

Commonwealth: Christian, 171; 
Milton's and Cromwell's, 169. 
See also State 

Communion, 220 

Communism, 112 

Competition, 82 

Conduct. See Christianity 

Constantine, 175 

Constructive Review, 207 

Creeds, 199; explanations of 
phrases in, 207 

Cretans, 1 

Crispi, Francesco, 163, 165 

Cromwell, Oliver, 169 

Cuba, 183 

Cunningham, Wm., 95, 163 

D 

Dante, 123, 168 

Democracy, 177, 192; commer- 
cial, 180; spiritual, 174 

De Quincey, Thomas, 126 

Dickinson, Lowes, 7 

Diplomacy, international, 163, 193 
note 



Discipleship, intellectualization of, 
199; Jesus' simple require- 
ment, 211 ; paradox of intellect- 
ual, 202 
Divorce, 40, 50, 55, 61 
Dogma, 199. See also Creeds 

E 

"Ecce Homo." See Seeley, Sir 

J.R. 
Economics, Christian, 86 
Education. See Schools, Children 
Elective system, 72 
Emerson, R. W., 192 
England, 176 
English public school, 67 
Environment and character, 83 
Erasmus, 190 
Eschatology, n, 23 
Eucken, R. C, 7, 31, 177, 224 
Eugenics, 53 

Europe, peace of, 186, 193 
European war, 193 note 



Falstaff, 187 

Family: as a school of character, 
57; Church teaching, 47; con- 
tinuity and perpetuity, 54; 
instability, 40; Jesus' philos- 
ophy of, 70; Jesus' teaching, 
44, 54; normal American, 73; 
physical conditions, 54; prac- 
ticability, 42 ; Roman unity, 43 

Fichte, J. G., 176 

Figgis, J. N., 9 

Formula of Concord, 211 

Forsyth, D. T., 12 

Fox, George, 202 

Fremantle, W. H., 219 

Fullerton, W. M., 166, 177 



Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 176 
Garrod, H. W., 6, 12, 14 
Giving: education of the giver, 
154; emotional and rational, 



INDEX 



231 



156; individual and personal, 

152; Jesus' teaching, 149; 

laws and limits, 147; spiritual- 

ization, 157 
Gloster, 187 
Golden Rule, 192 
Gore, C, 208 
Gospels: epistles and, 13. See 

also Christianity- 
Greek State, basis of, 43 



Hall, Bishop, 212 

Harnack, Adolf, 17, 24, 28 

Heroism, fields for, 189 

Herron, G. D., 27, 38, 77, 78 

Herter, C. S., 66 

Hodges, George, 210 

Holland, H. S., 33 

Home, 45; religious influence, 

62. See also Family 
Honesty, 133 
Hort, F. J. A., 33 
Howe, S. G., 190 
Humanization of business, 125 
Huxley, T. H., 21 



Idealism : American beginnings, 
182 ; education of, 185 ; need of 
a revival of, 225 ; political, 169 

Ignatius, St., 199 

Immaculate conception, 48 

Individuality, 71 

Industry. See Business 

Inge, W. R., 14 

Initiative, 183 

Institutions for children, 69, 154 

Intellectualization of Christian dis- 
cipleship, 199 

Investments, 121 

Italy, 175 



Jacks, L. P., 216 
James, Wm., 189 



Japan, classes in, 99 

Jefferson, C. E., 220 

Jesus : homelessness of, 45 ; in- 
consistencies, 29; nature of, 
204; not a reformer, 27; per- 
sonal relation, 35; purpose, 
31; social message, 86; Virgin 
birth, 48 

Jesus and Christ, 13 

Joseph and Mary, 48 

Jowett, Benj., 167, 168 



Kingdom of God, 171, 224 



Labor: Leo Xin on, 85. See also 
Business 

Last Day, 212 

Law, Wm., 143 

Lawrence (Mass.) strike, 101 

Lecky, W. E. H., 150 

Leo XIII, 85 

Lessing, G. E., 21 

Liberty, 185 

Life, 32 

Lightfoot, J. B., 199 

Literalism, 23, 27 

Literature, religious use for chil- 
dren, 63 

Lloyd, 13 

Love, 50, 60, 156, 192 

Lowell, J. R., 21 

Luxury. See Spending 

M 

Macaulay, T. B., 185 
Marcus Aurelius, 103 
Marriage, 49, 51; incompatibility, 
58; unity, 58. See also Family 
Martineau, James, 31 
Marx, Karl, 7, 107, 223 
Matthieu, J., 8 
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 176 
Mexico, 183 
Middle class, 108 



232 



INDEX 



Militarism, 186, 189, 194 

Mill, J. S., 35, 139 

Milton, John, 34, 117, 164, 169, 
188 

Minister, the Christian, 218 

Missions, foreign, 221 

Mitchell, W. C, 140 

Modena, 165 

Money and money-making, 106; 
American conditions, 109 ; 
American success, 180; autom- 
atism in industry, 126; Chris- 
tian life and, no; deceitfulness 
of riches, 117; hopeful indica- 
tions, 132; humanization of 
business, 125; Jesus' teaching, 
112; Jesus' teaching of fra- 
ternity, 128; justification of 
owning, 116; middle class, 
108; risks of possession, 115; 
stewardship, 116; utilization, 
119. See also Giving, Spending 

Moravians, 182 

More, Sir Thomas, 19 

Morley, John, 169, 175, 177, 213 

Muirhead, J. F., 184 

Municipal government, 162 

Munsterberg, Hugo, 183 

N 

Napoleon, 176 
Nation, The (N. Y.), 133 
Nicene Creed, 201 
Nietzsche, F. W., 7 
Nitti, F. S., 27 

O 

Oliphant, Lawrence, 19 
Ownership. See Stewardship 



Paganism, modern, 20 
Panama Canal, 166, 184 
Parenthood, delegated, 66 
Paul: as founder of Christianity, 
13; character of his letters, 33 



Peabody, F. G., 86, 114 

Peace. See War and Peace 

Pearson, Karl, 42 

Peile, J. H. F., 206 

Personality, 35, 71 

Philippines, 183 

Phillips, Wendell, 176 

Pietists, 182 

Placing-out system, 68, 15 

Plato, 173 

Plato's Republic, 167, 171, 173 

Politics: American, 162; Euro- 
pean, 193 ; forces that domi- 
nate, 177; Golden Rule in, 174; 
machinery and dynamic, 179; 
paradox of, 179; paradox of 
American, 183. See also State 

Poverty. See Rich and Poor, 
Money and Money-making, 
Wealth 

Power, 32 

President of the United States, 
powers, 166 

Proletariat, 107 

Property. See Money and Money- 
making, Wealth 

Proudhon, P. J., 112 

Prussia, 176 

Public opinion, 177 

Public spirit, 162 

Puritans, 182 



Quietism, 16, 25 

R 

Race-suicide, 52 
Rauschenbusch, W., 2, 78, 215 
Reforms, place of, 84 
Republic, Plato's, 167, 171, 173 
Retreat, 17, 25 
Ricardo, David, 126 
Rich and Poor, 107 
Riis, Jacob, 69 
Roland, Madame, 185 
Roman State, basis of, 43 
Ross, G. A. J., 200 



INDEX 



233 



Royce, Josiah, 10 

Ruskin, John, 117, 127, 181 

Russell, Lord John, 165 



Sanday, W., 208 

Sceva, 14 

Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 21, 203 

Schmoller, 181 

Schools for children, 65 

Schweitzer, 25 

Seeley, Sir J. R., 68, 119, 171, 219 

Seneca, 123, 148 

Service, law of, 90 

Simkhovitch, V. G., 109 

Simplicity, 144, 214 

Simplicity of Jesus' requirement 
for discipleship, 211 

Social conscience, limited range, 161 

"Social ethos," 16 

Socialism: fallacy in its pro- 
gramme, 82 ; family and, 41 ; 
Jesus and, 28, 114 

Social questions, 215 

Social service, 93, 215. See also 
Service 

"Socialization," 217 

Spain, 183 

Spencer, Herbert, 150 

Spending, 135; American ex- 
travagance, 136; fallacy of 
argument in defence of luxuries, 
138 ; Jesus' teaching, 142 ; 
regulation and system, 141 ; 
the test of service, 145 

State: American conditions, 179; 
American restlessness, 180; Aris- 
totle's conception, 168; Chris- 
tian life and, 161 ; Church and, 
191 ; duty of educating ideal- 
ism, 185; foundation, 178; 
Jesus' Gospel of the Kingdom, 
171; Jesus' teaching, 170; Mil- 
ton's, 169; moral seriousness 
of America, 182; Plato's Re- 
public, 167, 173; Plato's Re- 
public and the Gospel, 172; 
political idealism, 169, 175, 193 



Stewardship, 116, 140 
Stryker, M., 124 
Sumner, W. G., 16 
Survey, The, 79 
Syndicalism, 79 



Taussig, F. W., 139 

Temple, W., 96 

Thayer, W. R., 165 

Thirty-nine Articles of the Church 

of England, 201 
Thrift, 137 

Titus, Epistle to, 1, 2 note 
Tolstoi, Leo, 4, 16, 25, 115, 166 
Trade. See Business 
Trent, Council of, 34, 201 
Trevelyan, G. M., 15, 165, 176 
Tripoli, 164 
Troeltsch, E., 87 
Turkey, 163 
Tuscany, 165 

U 

Underhill, E., 33 

United States: idealism, 183, 

194. See also Politics, State 
Unity. See Church Unity 
Utilization. See Stewardship 



Venereal diseases, 30 
Virgin birth, 48 

W 

Wage system, 102 

War and peace, 186, 193 

Wealth: an instrument of ideal- 
ism, 178. See also Giving, 
Money and Money -making, Rich 
and Poor, Spending 

Weinel, Heinrich, 25, 226 

Wells, H. G., 41 

Wesley, Charles, 93 

Wesley, John, 218 



234 



INDEX 



Westcott, B. F., 97 
Westminster Confession, 201 
White, A. D., 162 
White, Bouck, 77, 113 
Whittier, J. G., 191 
Widgery, A. G., 25, 226 
Willoughby, W. W., 192 
Wilson, Woodrow, 192 
Woman, 42. See also Family 



Working classes, defection from 

Christianity, 20 
World Conference on Faith and 

Order, 204 



Zimmern, A. E., 181 



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